The annual review way past all the annual review deadlines
Let’s be real: December starts after Thanksgiving and ends on MLK’s Day
If you’ve read the subject line and thought to yourself “phew, someone else is also late to this ‘2024 planning’ party…” - let me immediately make you feel seen. December is a blur of a month. Main reason I’ve long opted to do Valentine’s Day cards instead of winter holiday cards is because December is… well, impossible. December starts on Thanksgiving. And ends on MLK’s Day. It is like the longest month of the year when most of us are asked to cook food we don’t actually like, buy lots of shit for people we know very little about, travel between cities/states/continents, care for our perpetually sick children (tis’ the season), and relive childhood traumas at the multiplicity of dinner tables. All the things many of us quietly (or loudly, like yours truly) despise. All in a little over 4 weeks. So no, I didn’t get to do my end of year recap. And no, I didn’t get to think about 2024. And 2024 is actually already now. So I hope this belated (and newly revised!) Trip Around The Sun, will be a welcome activity to embark on this coming long weekend.
Every year brings with it the elusive opportunity to do more, be more, show up more. This past year, I’ve had spurs of rebellion towards this idea and spurs of heightened productivity ironically brought on by last year’s theme of surrender. I’ve surrender to the calls of my heart, the clingy desires to do x and y and z, probably more than I should have. As someone wise once said - only half remembering the gist of it so if you know who said this please let me know - “if you’re not grieving things you’re saying no to, you are not saying enough no’s”.
In starting to reflect on my year, a new polarity showed up. I’ve noticed how the pace I crave (slow, present, focused, amble-y) and the pace of large chunks of my life in 2023 (fast, packed, overstimulated, with evergreen context-shifting) are becoming increasingly challenging to move between.
Then I stumbled on a great graphic in
that shows the different paces our world runs on, excerpted from the book “The Clock of the Long Now” by Stewart Brand.
My internal pace falls somewhere between nature and culture. Or perhaps, aspirationally, I wish this is where my pace would fall.
My outer pace - the life of work, kids, travel, friendships, complexity, realness - straddles the outermost layers. The chasm between the two is hard to deal with, day in day out, and yet it’s also weirdly conducive. The friction created between the different paces. The relationship created between the slower pace being a regenerative force towards the faster pace. The influence of layer X on the pace of layer Y. The inevitability of that dance.
“Fast learns, slow remembers. Fast proposes, slow disposes. Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous. Fast and small instructs slow and big by accrued innovation and by occasional revolution. Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy. Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power.”
- Stewart Brand “The Clock of the Long Now”
Call it getting old, call it a long-fermenting realization… I am struck by how the pace of certain milestones last year had been balanced out by the pace of small moments.
By all accounts, this was a year of massive leaps for me and my family. Bought a house. Renovated a house. Moved from the “cool kids” mecca to a legitimate forest. Changed schools. Went through two life changing personal development programs. Built a tiny coaching practice in my “off hours”. Read 27 books. Wrote and published over 25,000 words.
And yet the moments that stand out the most are so simple. Scattered across the full year. In no particular order. Sitting and working in the sun, on our terrace, listening to noises of the renovation going on in the background. Eating homemade chips made by Lukas. Making a smoothie with my 4 year old. Witnessing magnolia’s break out of their fuzzy shells in Prospect Park. Crafting a mermaid cake for my 6 year old’s birthday. Whistles of wind among the trees in our new backyard. Feeling the stickiness of bread dough on my fingers as I fold it. Rain violently pounding on our roof. Warmth from our fireplace.
The year that’s been made up of huge moments and personal leaps, comes back in these embodied memories - sensations, impressions, smells, sounds, the hard-to-name feelings.
What if “thinking big” about the year to come could be instead transformed into thinking about the kinds of small moments we want to cultivate? What if those small moments that are already here for us became our intentions? What if a new year was a great opportunity to keep those small moments exactly as they are? What if we pursued a heightened awareness of the small moments?
And if I sit with this notion for a moment longer, another idea for a year well spent unfolds… Simply put: taking all that was great about 2023 (especially the small moments) and just repeating it. Why shouldn’t I? Does every year really call for a new flavor and a new palette? If I know that I like my neutrals with my blacks, why should I invest in a series of neons just for a year? Has keeping things the way they are lost all cultural appeal? Is it inappropriate to crave a repeat? Does it always have to be up and to the right? I’d like to bring continuity, repetition, consistency, mundanity back into vogue.
I leave you with a slightly revised and streamlined Trip Around the Sun, which I hate calling a “personal annual review” framework, but really it is what it is, and I’m not going to wrap it in any more cotton, as the Polish saying goes. So, go knock yourself out with some good ol’ reflection and intention setting this weekend. Guess what I’ll be doing? Exactly that.
And if you feel like sharing some outtakes from your Trip Around the Sun with me - you can send me an email with whatever comes out of your reflection - and I’ll joyfully gift you 1:1 time with me. Here to jam if that’s something you could benefit from.
