rage against the routine
rekindling and (anti) resolutions
It’s been a minute.
A quick recap for the uninitiated. I started and finished my fashion design class at parson’s. Sketched a mini collection. My friends came to visit from london. I ran 8 races in 3 months. Left the country. Came back. Spent a second mingling at brand launches. Spent a lot of time alone.
Over the holidays, I didn’t see a single person outside of my parents for 10 days and it was a dream. In new york, there’s never time to just be. Or maybe there is, and I just can’t sit still.
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January is for rekindling. Friends who I haven’t seen in awhile will text me, what have you been up to, and I don’t know how to answer the question. My honest answer is I don’t even remember.
When we lived together lindsay and I used to joke that we both had amnesia, but I’m starting to believe I actually do. Sometimes, I do a mental test and try to remember what I did last weekend. But my brain always feel scrambled and I can only readily recall the few hours since I opened my eyes that morning.
On a walk to work, duncan and I marvel about how the year flew by. It feels like we were just starting to get into a swing of things, and then it was fall and suddenly, december. We’ve both hit the place where we’re going out less and spending more time staying in. It’s a nice part of growing up but a part of me is nostalgic for the past.
Without the anarchy of chasing the night, life feels more monotonous. Monotony is good I learned last year, but it makes it harder to measure the time when every day feels the same.
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I never set out to make an advice column, but I genuinely love it when I get a dm or note in my inbox in response to something I’ve written. Sometimes I’ll read a comment or a particularly heartfelt email, and feel so viscerally that I’m talking to a younger version of myself.
I’ve been thinking about this comment a lot for the past few months. This idea of perennial self-work. Every new years I set a goal. Become a morning person. Start a blog. Run a faster 5k.
When I started this blog, I was energized at the prospect of writing on the internet again. But after a while, it felt effortful to take everything I learned week after week and try to distill it into some deeper meaning.
When my parsons class got busy, I missed a week of writing to work on homework. And then, my friends came to visit from out of town, and I missed another week. Work gets busy and one missed week of writing quickly becomes two, three, four.
But to my credit, it was not for lack of trying. I started writing this post at the end of october and again mid-november. Reading back on my unfinished posts, is an indictment because 3 months ago I had identified this exact feeling of rushing through the daily motions of life, and aiming to be more present. And yet it’s a new year now and I’m still circling the same evergreen problem.
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If there’s one thing you should know about me it’s that I’m a glutton for it’s a fresh start.
Over the summer, my friends and I had a girls day at an art cafe. After a panicked scroll on pinterest, I settled on the ambitious undertaking of painting a sardine can onto my pot. I had gotten about 20 minutes into painting my pot when things started to go south. I looked over to lindsay, who had started a second watercolor page and joked “teacher, can I get a new paper?”. A classic line for elementary school tina — if you mess up a big project, it’s better to crumple up your efforts, toss it aside and start anew.
Unfortunately, rarely in life do we get the opportunity for a blank slate. Most of the time you’re left to paint 4 more layers over your shitty pot and make do with what you’ve got.
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Consistency is in vogue at the moment, or so tiktok says. It’s the key to becoming a morning person, growing a following, glowing up.
The trap with the new year is approaching the year like it’s the start of a streak that you have to get exactly right. Mentally, it’s tantalizing — start 75 hard today and you’ll be ripped by spring. Start a new behavior today and 3 weeks from now you’ll have a habit. Stop drinking for 30 days and you’ll be a balanced drinker forever.
But what happens when you fall off the wagon? My toxic trait is to equate consistency with perfection, and once the streak is ruined I lose the motivation to keep going.
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When it comes to self work, there are a couple things that I’ve learned.
The first is patience. Things will always take longer than you think they will when you’re trying to make a change as drastic as re-wiring your brain. They say it takes half as long as you dated someone to truly get over a breakup. Double that and give it to the next person trying to change her habits.
The second, is that while consistency is admirable, don’t let it trap you into rigidity. I’ve been working a lot on hitting the sweet spot on the “good enough curve” rather than unconsciously expecting perfection. Strict resolutions might feel more satisfying to work on, but don’t let it prevent you from getting back on track if you fall off the wagon.
The last, which is a thing that I frequently under appreciate, is that struggling with self-work is not a unique problem to you. I sometimes hold this belief that everyone else in the world is able to improve themselves, and I’m the only person messing it up. The singular inconsistent person in an unforgivingly consistent world.
It’s helpful to look around and realize that everyone struggles with self work. Case study #1: me with this blog.
There was a part of me that when I stopped writing felt like I was regressing, and that can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just because we’re struggling through something doesn’t mean that we’re going backwards. A lot of trying to change starts with re-framing things in your head (sometime I will get into in a part 2) rather than beating yourself into submission.
For now, take those feelings of uncertainty as affirmation that you are doing something hard because self work is supposed to be hard. Approach it as an opportunity to prove to yourself that you can do hard things. Progress might not be linear, but it doesn’t mean that we’re failing. Life is messy but the future is beautiful.
xx tina
loved loved loved this post
one of your best posts yet