Throwing the pants in the fire

Thoughts for the end of 2023

On the afternoon of the Solstice, my friend Christina sent a text: anyone want to come over tonight, burn anything you’d like to let go of, and call in the light of the new year?

My answer was duh, of course, so a few of us went over and sat by her outdoor fireplace wrapped in blankets, drinking tea and eating clementines, and writing things down on scraps of paper to toss into the flames. It was lovely and quiet, a ritual I’ve done many times on new moons and full moons and solstices and random Tuesday nights when I just want to clear some shit.

It was late, the part of the evening where everyone was standing around and collecting mugs and blankets after saying “well, I think we’re gonna head out” but before actually heading out, when a guy walked into the backyard carrying two giant Amazon boxes. “Is it too late to burn stuff?”

The hosts said no, it wasn’t too late to burn stuff. And I do mean stuff. We all sat back down. The guy’s name was Sean, and one by one, he pulled things out of the boxes: a gigantic stack of health insurance paperwork. Medical records. A big mind map poster of ideas and projects that now felt outdated and limiting. We listened as he explained the story behind each thing before dropping it into the fire. Photos of someone important who’d lived through something terrible. Prayer flags. A macramé bracelet given to him by Ram Dass. “I realized, why do I need all these signifiers of spirituality when I can just be spiritual?”

A tiny Spanish dictionary.

A pocket mandolin.

A well-loved pair of patchwork pants, worn to many festivals by a version of himself who doesn’t exist anymore.

We weren’t sure the pants would burn at first, but as the flames took them, he pulled out a guitar and played: a combination of Bjork, something else I can’t remember, and a song he wrote for a friend, quickly and urgently, as they were dying. Sean was a musician, it turned out, a very good one.

We stood in a circle, quiet, listening, watching the flames and the ash floating up into the black night, like our earliest ancestors did on the darkest night of the year except for the festival pants part.

I don’t know what anybody else was thinking about, but I was thinking about the long sequence of unknowable things that had to happen in order to find myself standing there in that circle. And about having a whole house full of things to burn.

In 2023, I had a lot of good intentions and promised a lot of stuff (Quitted Season 2, a menopause podcast, teaching breathwork, regularly published newsletters, generally participating in the world) and then it turned out I really wasn’t done with sitting on my front steps and trying to feel the blood moving inside my hands. For the first time in my whole life, I didn’t override my body when it said I am not ready to achieve more than the bare minimum. I didn’t send it to school with a fever and make it take the SATs. I just said, okay body, you’re the boss, and got up from the computer.

Not only did I not live up to my potential, I spent a good bit of this year questioning what “potential” even is, and how the concept of future potential is intrinsically at odds with living in the present moment.

In 2023 I went to the doctor. A lot. Like, it was basically a job except I paid them. Progress has been very slow despite doing “all the right things,” and I’ve had days where I really wanted to say screw it and stop spending money and time on treatments that may or may not be working. I’m also in year 7 of perimenopause and can I state for the record that I am so over this shit? But in 2023 I’ve also been practicing patience, and learning to stay instead of bail when I get frustrated. Slow progress is still progress, and this is something to celebrate. And a tumor that isn’t growing is the best kind of tumor.

What felt good in 2023? Analog drawing, including quick portraits of people in Zoom meetings.¹ Mentoring artists through The Long Table Collective. Small group strength training twice a week at Fitness Union in Portland, which is a very special place. (Three years ago, if you told me I’d feature prominently in a promotional video for a gym, I… would have called you a name.) Saunas. Screaming in my car. Watching TV in bed with my partner, rubbing each other’s feet and psychoanalyzing dating show contestants. Deepening in-person friendships. Breathwork. Moving my body in a way that feels suspiciously like dancing. Appreciating trees. Letting my hair be gray. Grain-free bread from Bastion, a local bakery, which is ungodly expensive and I justify it by saying “I don’t drink or go out!” which are both true, but has nothing to do with the bread. Deciding to stop putting pressure on myself around this newsletter. Allowing people to support me. Letting go of what wants to die. Trazodone and melatonin for my menopausal body that won’t sleep without assistance.² Learning from long-form sources and journalists, not social media. An overall reduction of hot takes in my life, in general. Meeting feelings of fear, overwhelm, anger and despair with acts of kindness. Letting intuition override logic. Letting my body make decisions. Being more and more and more okay with not knowing.

(I love reading these lists; feel free to share yours in the comments!)

Worth noting: nothing on the above list has anything to do with work. My 2023 freelance gig was exactly what I needed in this transitional space: a way to make money that was not very hard. I also made $13,000 from this newsletter this year, which, just, thank you. When I announced I was removing the paywall and not committing to a publishing cadence, I expected about a third of paid subscribers to ask for refunds or downgrade to free, so I was amazed when it was more like 10%. I was so touched and honored by the comments from y’all on that piece; when I tell you I wept while reading them, I’m not exaggerating. The idea that I could be paid for work I’ve already done has supported me in letting go of my long-held belief that life has to be hard. Thank you.

There are a million best practices for “success on Substack,” and I haven’t followed any of them. Part of the reason is my choice to not try and make this my primary income source, and Substack’s definition of success is growth and monetization. But I wonder if there’s a different kind of value here, too, found in modeling the kind of life changes I’ve been chronicling and experiencing the last few years. I have deliberately not been writing in an extremely prolific way about recovering from burnout, and that feels important to me. This also feels like success.

What I’m trying to say is thank you for being here, in real time, as I learn what feels like a new language, practice changing my mind, and generally behave in ways that former versions of myself would judge as irresponsible and lazy. I’ve been slow to publish this fall, but I have four essays that are 75% complete, so there’s a resolution right there. Despite—or perhaps because of—all the horror and heartbreak in the world, the energy of 2024 feels like an imperative to catch and spread joy where I can, so… watch this space.

Gigantic thanks to all of you who made donations to Lacy Young’s GoFundMe. She was completely blown away, and she’s resting now, which your donations have enabled her to do. She’s happily receiving prayers, vibes, energy, and healing thoughts if you have any to spare.

If you’re looking for a good process for completing 2023, this one is from Lacy, and I did it yesterday:

• Pull out your calendar and walk through the year month by month. Give each month a theme name and sum it up in a sentence or two.

• Think about who you were, what you did, and how it felt. Was it aligned or misaligned? Do you want to offer any words of gratitude or call your energy back from a specific event or place?

• Pull your expenses and make a pie chart (banks and credit cards will automatically do this). See where you allocated money energy. What was your favorite trade of money energy for an experience you wanted to have? What was your least favorite?

• Pull a photo of yourself from each month and put them in a folder on your phone. Go photo by photo and speak kind words to yourself. What do you notice about who you were in that moment? What do you want to celebrate or grieve?

• Declare 2023 complete with love and gratitude, and welcome 2024 by speaking all the joy you know is coming. Make a list of what you’d like to invite, experience, and live into in 2024.

Happy New Year, everybody. Wishing us all love, peace and safety, joy and ease, freedom and health, good food, community and friendship, and the self-assuredness of a cat who knows he’s magnificent.

1. (When I was a kid, I learned to do quick portrait studies by drawing at-bat baseball players on TV with my artist mom. For longer portraits, we drew the hosts of McNeil Lehrer News Hour on PBS, the world’s least dynamic news program.)

2. As always, not medical advice, this is just what’s been working for me.