Thirteen Things I Learned This Year or Plan to Do Next Year
Yes, it's another end-of-year reflection post. No, it was not written by AI.
Greetings Everybody
This is a lightly modified version of a longer letter I sent to family and friends. This has been modified (both for context and privacy purposes), but I thought the thirteen takeaways I included were worthy of a post in their own right. Apologies for the handful of folks seeing this twice. —CL
Let me start by saying that I've never written one of these Year-in-Review / What I Learned This Year kind of messages — they almost always come across as the sort of thing people do only when they're important, pretending to be important, or nearing death. I promise, that isn't me. It definitely isn't David (aka, Husbot), but since I'm the one writing this, I'll be largely speaking for myself. Anyway, this won't be a laundry list of achievements or humble-brags, and neither of us are dying.
Instead, the goal of this letter is twofold:
First, it's one of the few socially-recognized excuses to mass-blast a message to a list of people that isn't generally going to end up in a spam folder (granted, if you’re subscribed to this newsletter, I already have your permission, so…);
Second, it forces me to put thoughts to paper (more on why that's important in a bit).
One Year, Some Big Changes
Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.
Margaret J. Wheatley
After David and I somehow wound up with eight cats in our house here in Dublin, Ireland (mostly through foster failing/adoption and my complete inability to say no), he put his foot down, and declared no more cats.
That lasted approximately two months, and then he fell in love with Rosie and caved on his 'no more cats' rule. Though, he swears she will be the last one, for reals this time, he means it.
To be fair, we haven't adopted any new cats since. But we did go bike the Tour de Geuze (a famous Belgian beer crawl around the Flanders region of Belgium). I recommend it, both because the Belgian countryside is beautiful, and because it’s way more fun to bike along beautiful paths mildly drunk than risk hitting someone or getting arrested driving a car even slightly buzzed.
I also went to Venice for a really cool privacy event and bought some actual fancy Italian clothes, and we did a whole lot of traveling around Ireland (for conferences and beer events, naturally).
We also both became citizens of Ireland through naturalization this year!
We are both now dual nationals, and have our passports and everything! We did some travelling, and I finished out the year in Madeira, Portugal. I also decided to mostly quit my job as a data protection consultant, and focus on writing instead.
Thoughts on Change and the Year Ahead
If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.
Katherine Hepburn
Below are thirteen things I learned this year that I think are worth sharing, and what I hope for next year. All of this is in no particular order, just to keep everyone guessing.
It's well known that once a woman hits her 40s, she ceases to give a shit about what others think, and I think that is mostly correct. I still care, but my caring is selective, and usually only crops up during momentary times of weakness, or for people whose opinions I actually value.
Related: I firmly believe this is a good thing (tm), and if there's anything I hope for in our coming transhumanist future/hellscape, it's that women are encouraged to figure this out much earlier in life — like say, at age 16.
Also for the ladies: It turns out that when you ask men what they're thinking of, and they say nothing, that is actually the truth. Science hippies call it the 'nothing box' theory. I am so jealous. It took me ten years of marriage to learn this. You're welcome.
Men: The same does not hold true for us. Every woman you know is thinking of at least 3-10 things, simultaneously.
A bunch of people who write professionally for a living recommend writing daily as a way to clarify one's thoughts, make sense of the world, and better get to know oneself. I'm here to share that they're 100% on point. Deep, reflective writing about what I'm thinking, feeling, and ruminating over has been better than any form of therapy for me. I now journal every day.
Even if nobody reads what I write, I still find writing cathartic and it has helped me clarify so many things in my messy brain. As I told David today, I ruminate less now. And when people do read what I write and find something of value from it, it warms my cold, cold heart.
For years, I have thought of myself as some variation of a professional cynical bastard, powered by rage and a misanthropic view of my fellow man. This was a moderately useful position to take at one point in my life, but it's tiring. So, so tiring. Being a 24/7, perpetually on-guard skeptic makes for tough living. And stressful relationships.
While I don't have the temperament or the stomach to be a true optimist, I do want to spend the next year (at least) embracing something more like optimistic contrarianism or optimistic skepticism (H/T Shoshana Rosenberg for the first one!). I'm still deeply jaded and distrusting about the human condition writ large, but given our brief time on this spinning ball, I would rather employ my righteous indignation towards at least trying to correct the injustices I see in the world, even if only a little bit. And I want to be nicer to the people in my life who are patiently dealing with me day-to-day. Like my long suffering husband. To be fair, he was warned.
I really want to doomscroll less and get back into reading fiction more. Law school mostly beat any love of reading out of me, and while I renewed my love of nonfiction, somewhere along the line, I told myself that fiction was frivolous and escapist, but clearly that is wrong. So lay it on me. What should I read?
After the pandemic, I really let myself go, and it all kinda caught up with me this year. It turns out that shit goes downhill as you age, especially when you hit your 40s and 60s! Hooray! In 202
45, I want to fix that, and I'm taking some positive steps to get there.
PS: Ozempic is kind of amazing, y'all, It fixes a lot of things even beyond the known stuff like diabetes and weight loss. Also, yoga. Yoga is the closest I will probably ever get to entering the 'nothing box' mental state of men, though I hear that transcendental meditation also works.Travel is really, really good for you. Getting out and away, leaving your comfort zone, and re-evaluating your priors about people and locations, what's safe and what you've been told, is vital. I know that it's hard (especially for those of you with kids, elderly parents, or limited means), but spending time being somewhere else that's genuinely foreign to you (and not just like, a state over), is so affirming, and it shrinks the 'differences' between us.
If you're fortunate enough, I also highly recommend living abroad for a month or longer somewhere. This is mostly directed at my American friends, where only 51% of Ameicans have a passport (In Ireland, it's 73%).I am legitimately convinced that Donald Trump and the upcoming US authoritarian nightmare would not have happened if more Americans actually had a passport and left America regularly (I try to keep this newsletter mostly free of political discourse, but honestly, calling out the bullshit is important).
We are living in a time of increasing loneliness and isolation, and I want to make an effort in 2025 to not fall into the same patterns as before. Let's keep in touch, eh?
That's it. You made it to the end. I hope some of this was interesting/funny/entertaining/insightful for you, or that you at least don't mind this particular form of content.
Take care, be good to yourselves and others, and don't be a stranger. And of course, if you think someone else might benefit, please do share this with your family and friends. Happy New Year to all my readers. — Carey