A new beginning
Oh, hi friends!
Let’s talk resolutions!
Just kidding.
I still have sleepy brain. Maybe you do, too?
One thing I did do over the weekend was what Tim Ferriss calls a “past year review.” I went through my 2020 calendar week by week and wrote down all the “positives” and “negatives” that happened. This might sound horrifying — why look backwards, especially now that we have a fresh start? But it was clarifying (and felt like an essential bookend). My positive list was three times longer than the negative one. Three times!
I push on the future a lot. Reach for your dreams! Keep trying! Focus and stay hopeful! But in this one instance, looking back actually showed me where I am right now. What I want more of. Less of. What can stay behind.
So many of my positive experiences came down to simple choices. Finish the play. Say ‘no.’ Ask for more. Be generous. And many of them — most of them — came from moments I never could have predicted. Tiny moments I leaned into or away from and which colored the year.
If you’re also easing into 2021, starting here might help.
You don’t necessarily have to dig in and resolve to do better and improve right now.
But what about considering where you might want to lean, and asking what went right last year?
Then, when you’re given an unexpected choice, you'll be ready.
We came across this tree in Central Park last weekend. Those aren’t letters to Santa on the branches, but photos and tributes to neighborhood pets who died this year. It is a beautiful thing, to remember.
Would You Like a Laugh?
The funniest show I’ve seen in a long while is Staged, a BBC show starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant as two actors whose plans to do a play on the West End fall apart due to the pandemic. Well, that’s partly true. They’re two actors playing “Michael Sheen” and “David Tennant,” hopefully fictionalized versions of themselves. The 22-minute episodes are full of banter and theater references and reminded me of two things: How nice it is to laugh and how the creative process, even when thwarted, can yield gems like this one. It’s on Hulu!
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Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara