An intention for 2024

I’ve been setting one-word intentions for the last six years. But in 2023, I didn’t. I was not feeling motivated or optimistic. I said “Whatever happens, happens,” which is what my ballet teacher says when she isn’t confident that we understand an exercise but doesn’t have time to rehearse it again.

What happened first is that I said yes to a lot of things. In part, I said yes to things for money. I picked up as many shifts as I could at the art institute where I sometimes work events. I started working with a second editor at Publisher’s Weekly, so I had twice as many review assignments. I taught writing workshops and sought out freelance work and signed up for experiments at the science center.

But working for money all day every day makes my life feel small and cramped. So I also said yes to a lot of things that didn’t pay, because it made me feel useful or creative or both. I volunteered as a slushpile reader for a literary magazine. I moderated three panels for the annual Flights of Foundry convention. I took a train to Virginia and helped out at the Virginia Festival of the Book, and loved every minute of that. I took courses: Introduction to Disaster Management (useful!), Narrative Collage (incredible), and a summer Regional Field Ecology class that included weekly hikes (and in one case, kayaking). I continued my volunteer work as a tree tender and watershed steward, so I did spend a glorious amount of time outdoors in every season.

By mid-year, I was very tired. Also injured, with minor but persistent tendonitis that kept me out of ballet classes for two months.

So then I started saying no to things. When my term as a slushpile reader ended, I did not renew. I asked for a summer hiatus from writing book reviews–my weekly field reports took a lot of time–and then I did not return. I stopped jumping on opportunities for contract and freelance work. This was only possible because I finally, at long last, began to approach the end of the debt I’ve been trying to pay off for five years.

By September, for the first time in a very long while, I had a little time and space to think. And I did not consciously ask myself how I wanted to live my life when I wasn’t constantly trying to scrape together cash, but an answer bubbled up all the same. I want to work less but do more. I want to dedicate more time and resources to climate communication, but also have more time to breathe. I want the space to mess around and make discoveries and be creative. I am fortunate to have so many opportunities for meaningful work and relationships; I want to be able to enjoy them.

My intention for 2024 is to stretch. In 2023, I often felt that I was on a railcar ride at an amusement park: I shuttled from one obligation to the next, and any disruption could derail me completely. In 2024 I want to stop the ride and stand up. I want to reach my arms as far as they will go, see what my fingertips brush against. I literally, physically don’t want to remain seated for as much time as I do on a day when I am working remotely and also teaching online and also unwinding through screen time alone or with friends. Stretch reminds me of stretch goal, a reminder to stay open if the universe offers more than what you ask for. Stretching is what I need to do before and after physical exertion to avoid injury; it’s a reminder to warm up and cool down before taking any big leaps, physical or otherwise.

And I do plan to take some big leaps. In January, I am starting an interdisciplinary master’s degree offered by the university where I work. The program will allow me to take classes in different subject areas–writing, environmental studies, urban history–and submit a creative project for my final thesis. The project I have in mind is an extension of a fragmented essay I started in Narrative Collage: exploring the buried streams of Philadelphia. I’m deciding between two courses in the spring: one on public environmental humanities (whatever that means!) and one on ethnography in public spaces. I am surprised to find myself a grad student once again (did I not learn my lessons last time??) but I feel hopeful and confident that this degree can be balanced with my work and life in a way that my PhD could not be. I am also hopeful that the degree, with its focus on writing and the environment, will position me for a future step in my career as a communications professional. It feels good to have ambitions again.

I hope the new year brings you clarity on the life you want, and the motivation to live it.