Living Human

 

Listing off my accomplishments from 2025 in my last newsletter certainly gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling, reveling in the doing I had done. But as I think about what the year to come will look like, I have some new thoughts on how to plan. Firstly, that a year is entirely too long of a time period to set a resolution( a month is more appropriate), but also that resolutions tend to come in the form of outcome. Move apartments. Take a pottery class, etc, so on. But when those outcomes are accomplished, the payoff doesn’t always feel proportional to the achievement. Dominating your resolution checklist isn’t going to feel bad, but it may not change your life much either.

I’ve certainly experienced this phenomena, and that’s why I’ve been learning about other ways to plan ahead. And there are two other types of goals that aren’t purely outcome driven. The second is a more successful version of the first, process. Go to the gym twice a week. No screens in bed. 30m financial check in on Sundays. Whether you hit your numbers or not, these usually feel good because they are about more than just an accomplishment, they are about a practice. A practice that feeds a dedication to a mindset you want to inhabit. You go to the gym because that fitness helps you mentally, helps you sleep, helps keep you regulated in your daily life (feels good). You check in about your finances every Sunday which makes you feel less scared when the perfect jacket appears out in the wild, you know you can (or can’t) afford it, and the knowing provides one less opportunity for guilt and general stress that stems from money (which never goes away, I’m told). 

But the type of resolution I’m really interested in this year, is one I’ve never heard of before, values based resolutions. Instead of wanting to write a novel, or write every morning, I could say, I want to inhabit the value of curiosity. It may seem unrelated, but if one of the reasons I haven’t been motivated to write in so long is that it’s lost its fun, that I’m too in my head, too worried about being a GREAT writer, locked into formats that feel safe (like a blog post). Then when things cross my desk: someone talks about how they’re doing the Artist’s Way, or an exercise where they free write for 20 minutes from creative prompts every day for a month, when I toss these options around in my head( do I have time, can I do it from home, will I stick with it or will this be another thing that makes me feel guilty?), one of the factors will be, GREG’S CURIOSITY. It will make me feel the opposite of guilt. Ok well, I can’t promise that, but it will be a value that I genuinely desire, not just a trinket of comparison I slipped in my pocket while scrolling. And it will have more weight than the others. I will have to think about what a curious person would do and consider when offered a chance at a new creative project. 

Would he worry about where is best to write, whether he will make it through the whole month, whether he will feel guilty in the hypothetical future? I think the answer is pretty obvious. He would dive in before thinking. He would be compelled to try it, dazzled by the newness and the opportunity for a different prompt everyday. A fresh counting chance to explore something new. An idea or an experience he may never have gotten to without it. He would not worry about the process OR the outcome. But lead with the value of curiosity. Didn't finish it? Well, you did 3 days more than you would have if you hadn't tried!

So there’s an example of the potential power of a value based resolution. It’s not one I chose for this year, simply because I think I am in a good place with my curiosity at the moment. I have been reading a lot (hit my 28 book goal for last year!), and trying new things was the order of the day last year. But I do have a few. 

 

-warmth
-to be a relational person
-honesty

 

I hesitated to share those because they feel kind of personal, but I thought about being relational and honest and so we plunge forward. 

When I think about the disconnect between what I want for myself and what I have, it’s not so great a journey left. But the main thing would probably be a partner (having now acquired a cat! What's up Mousse!). And the reasons why someone doesn’t have a long-term romantic partner can be many, and some of those reasons are systemic (dating apps, the modern dopamine addicted mind, societal modeling of what a relationship is supposed to look or feel like). But there is also a finger pointing back at me. What can I do that I haven’t? I’ve made outcome resolutions many years. “This is the year, I will get a partner”. A pep talk as much as a resolution.  But after 3 years in a row of that not happening, or dating someone but it never getting past casual, I became embarrassed. Didn’t want to put it out into the world a 4^th and 5^th time and fail publicly again at something that is supposed to be second nature for humans. 

So you may remember, in 2024, I set a processed based resolution. I would go on as many dates as I could. Say yes to anyone who seemed a reasonably good fit and was interested. And I went on 25 dates with 18 different women (I’m terrible at actual numbers but something like that), and all I got was this T-shirt and one panic attack. Once or twice, I declined a second date, but every other time I went forward pledging to be more realistic, to let love grow, to get time to know each other better. And over and over, the same sort of messages. “Friend vibes,” Not in a place to be dating,” “You’re amazing actually,” “Would you want to be friends?” (Which I once said “definitely!” And then when asking to schedule another hangout realized she didn’t mean it, lol). And at the end of the year, it was the worst I had felt since moving to Philadelphia and trying to find love. Not just because I had so far failed, but because the process of online dating felt so awful. Accentuated all the self-doubt and anxiety, and plain old fear of rejection. I felt uninteresting, unattractive, like a burden or someone pitiable. 

And negative self-talk aside, where was I in all of this? I went on the dates, I tried to keep them light and flirty, ask questions, come up with cute date ideas, say yes and be flexible, and every time it didn’t “work.” But when people watching at the brewery, successful daters didn’t demonstrate a clear pattern of action, they just seemed to have ‘it’. They were just attractive. Had a magnetism. How does one achieve magnetism? It’s of course not a helpful way of looking at things (and the entrance to an incel mindset of have and have not). You cannot change who you are of course, but you can work on yourself and be confident. Not in the outcome (that all potential partners will puddle around you) but in knowing deeply who you are, what you value. This is solid advice that is exceedingly difficult to take in modern times. But also, you can be warm. 

And this is something I struggle with. I’ve often said while dating that I wish we could push through the awkwardness of the first few dates, because once I get comfortable with people, I am much more charming, dynamic, exciting. Not because I didn’t enjoy those first dates, but because I feared the pain of feeling the date was good, starting to day dream a little, and then getting a break off text after 24-36 hours of silence. All of these tactics and processes point to one thing. I don’t feel comfortable, or even relatively at ease. It’s normal to be nervous, but I am sometimes a wreck. And within that churning self-doubt, there is no real way to access your well of warmth. Often when I can tell someone has feelings for me, I inventory the moment when it sort of clicked and it is because I said or did something sweet.

I do things that are sweet on dates of course, but it does not feel for one moment clear that someone likes me back. Is it lack of familiarity? Is it the fact that I am afraid of being too eager? Does it feel too fast to them even if it’s only a small thing? While I don't want to stop being sweet on dates because I like thinking and doing for others and therefore it’s a taste of what it would be like to date me, there’s the question of delivery. Since I am trained to be unsure, I think I am also not fully embodied in the act, as a way of protecting my feelings. This is a demonstration, like I said, not something totally in the moment.

And that I think is worth noting. That’s where my warmth could be stoked. Instead of playing all the scenarios in my head to mentally shield against the slings and arrows. I could be more present. I could care MORE. Be naive. Be foolish. More vulnerable to the pain of the moment, and in the same breath the exhilaration of the potential that things work out. This is what someone who is warm would do. They would love the person (lowercase ‘L’) for what they offer in the moment. They wouldn’t catalogue and measure and judge. They would just chase the contentment of being. Any time I’ve had a good app date, it has gone on quite long, and pretty easily. This is a sign but also a state of mind. Content to be here. But this isn’t just something for dating, but a vulnerability I want to share more in life. I find when I am able to give warmth to others, it feels so damn good. I feel connected, feel present, time falls away, stress leaves me. And what bad thing could come from it that wouldn’t befall me anyway?

And that leads to value number two, being a relational person. When I am disconnected from my warmth, I forget that I am a social creature.  I allow my inaction to be my identity. I think “I am bad at texting, picky with people, solitary.” And that keeps me from reaching out when I need help, or when I need connection. Something that snowballs into isolation, and quickly to despair. I don’t tend to stay there too long after years of learning how to care for myself, but now having a different perspective on why I behave this way through therapy and my ADHD diagnosis, I am looking at things from a different angle. 

I do 'office hours' in the library once or twice a week, I take care of admin things (emails that need sending, things that need research, money things), and when there, I tend to reach out to friends. “I think you would like this album” “This made me think of you” “I have a question” “Would you want to go to this?”  Without it ever entering my to-do list, I reach out, I make plans out of genuine desire. It is as if clearing my mental space of all the loose ends makes space for my relational self. And so it has become clear to me, that having the bandwidth to reach out (which is an ADHD symptom btw, seeing an outstanding text as a full task) is tied to taking care of all the admin in my life. Making the space for it in my otherwise cluttered mind. 

And I'd like to be this way not just for the friends I already have, but for forming new acquaintances, professional relationships, reaching out to people who haven’t responded to emails, not taking a lack of response for a lack of interest. I want to be the type of person who does their part and so is less likely to wonder “if I had only.” If it doesn’t work out, but I did what I could, I’ll be at peace. I think this value will help me build connections and also meet new people, which will put me in a better situation to find a partner, on top of helping me maintain my close friendships which sometimes feel further away than I would like. 

And lastly we're talking honesty. It’s a very charged concept for me. I learned to lie at a young age to get what I wanted and avoid punishment. Having started so young, it’s been a life-long journey to become more honest every year, with strangers, with friends, with family, and with myself. Though I really have cut the needless untruths down to size, I took an important mental step last year in realizing honesty would be required to write again.

That of the many fears I had about writing, most of them boiled down to a phrase “I don’t know where to begin.” Of the many phrases you hear about writing, the one that is the most intuitive is “write what you know.” Which isn’t to say that one can only write about themselves, but rather, if you are uncomfortable sharing some part of yourself. If there are quite a few rooms you’d rather not spend time in, that can hold you back in more ways than the main. You will have to, at very least, be comfortable in the many wings of your mind, even if you don’t share all of what’s inside. And in the re-building of my writing practice, I realized, writing isn’t just opening the windows and flinging things out to the ex that wronged you. It isn’t about dirty laundry at all, but about airing the house now and again. To let the old out, and the new in. 

So much of my anxiety comes from not being able to get things out of my head (see relational section above). I ooze ideas, but when they are taken down piecemeal in voice notes and on the backs of receipts, it is like writing down dance moves. Exploring them, shaping them into what they are supposed is how the thing takes form and becomes untethered. I am a steward of the ideas I have been blessed with. It is a joy to be a thinker, especially when your thoughts are chisel blows, shaping the raw material, and not just batting it around, or stashing it behind things for one day. 

But it’s not just as an artist that I want to be more honest (fun fact, before I fleshed out Shipwreck I wanted my greeting card company to be called “Slightly More Honest”), but in my daily life generally. I was not raised in a family where conflict was navigated calmly, if at all. And because of that, the fear that sometimes bubbles when things come to a head has me searching for strategies to get myself to safety. For years I learned the that easiest way to do that was to simply appease the other party, say whatever needed saying to calm the beast within them. To take away the threat (of what exactly?). I got so good at this strategy, that I began to see even basic interactions and invitations as conflict. Something to be managed and navigated. This I think began my journey of extreme uncertainty. I remember the BIG and complicated emotions I would have when I was invited to a friends house to sleepover on a Friday. Did I want that? Did I want to stay with THAT friend? What were my siblings doing? What other options did I have? I needed to play everything right or it all could come tumbling down on my 10 year old life. 

Now as I unravel so many things I’ve never examined( the way I hold my body, the thought patterns I assumed were just who I was, the way in which I see myself) I am finding that honesty is the most powerful multi-purpose tool. I’ve always valued it, but at the same time, felt super raw if I ever shared too much or questioned if I was being accurate when talking about myself. How could I ever know? Well, I’ve been in my head enough years now to say, all that thinking and questioning is a hindrance, and not a gift, if you can’t take it out and unravel it and leave it in the sun to dry. Give it your attention and try and name it. 

When I have doubt, when I feel confused, I will reference my honesty and see if I am embodying it. It’s not that I couldn’t have become a coder, but checking in with how the process felt after 2 years of pursuit, forced me to admit there was a lot of guilt, shame, and negative self talk tied up in it, and very little that gave me pleasure or motivation besides the idea of stability (which remained just an idea, as I worked a full time job and did art and wrote). And I had to be honest that it was weighing on me heavily. That it was something I dare not speak “I don’t want to keep looking for coding work.” I worried I would seem ungrateful, unserious, spoiled, would prove those who doubt me correct. The elaborate peanut gallery of my mind would be taking their betting slips to the counter for payday. 

At the end of the day, it’s my life alone. I can try to do things, and I can be honest about my faults about the things I tried that didn’t work out. I can and will try again, and fail again. It’s not shameful so much as it is just deeply human. I don’t have to hand over a treatise when I tell someone it didn’t work out. I can simply say it. And that’s what I want to work on. Simply speaking the truth. Taking criticism. Giving my opinion. Trying to find my opinion when not having one is getting in the way of progress. And generally admitting to the humanity I’ve had all along. I'm betting there's good stuff to come if I can keep these values in mind. 

If you haven't met, this is Mousse! My cat, she's a tiny 6 year old tabby, but she has the energy of a kitten.