it is 2023

Somehow, it's already January 1st 2023, and I didn't find time yet to reflect on last year and to prepare for what I want to focus on this year. Running up against time is a theme that I've started to notice more and more recently, and it's especially discouraging in the way it spawns off a mini existentialist crisis, forcing me to paradoxically think more about the future alongside an undercurrent of the nagging feeling that I should be focusing on enjoying the present moment -- a disgustingly human experience.

I did start taking some notes on the plane on my way back from New York after Christmas, so in no particular order, here's a random list of things I want to work on:

• making my own clothing / getting better at sewing
• get through an online music course I paid for and started last year
• draw more [in public] and get over my fear / anxiety over other people watching what I'm working on
• figure out my psychological issues with having kids
• keep climbing and getting stronger
• improve hip flexibility, get into a habit of stretching daily after waking up
• take a gun safety course
• learn how to drive stick (properly ._. third time's the charm?)
• more creative writing. trying to put a bar at 6 pieces this year (one per 2 months), figure it's reasonable enough to try to hit
• maybe also more writing in general, like my random real life thoughts/learnings from hobbies and projects
• I also have this desire to clean up my digital life and organize stuff better (like personal files / photos / website etc. wise) but tbh I don't think I actually have the energy to enjoy the process of doing this, I just kinda want it to be done, so I'm not sure if this will go anywhere.

I also had a section on reflections for 2022, but tbh it was mostly about work and I hadn't started writing anything about any other part of my life, but I also don't really feel like dwelling a lot on it now and I can't even really think of anything in particular to point out, other than I still miss Cheddar. 

sunrise at joshua tree national park on december 31 2022

I spent the last few days camping and sitting out in nature and it was quite nice. Like a lot of people who have probably only read the opening two pages of Walden, I used to romanticize going to the woods to live deliberately, then regressed against that popular thought for a while because I realized I wouldn't actually enjoy living in solitude in the woods for two years like Thoreau did (a very literal interpretation I suppose), to now -- I think -- appreciating it more again since I was able to do it with some people I enjoy spending time with, but also knowing that it was not at all the full solo experience. 

Still, there are some interesting learnings that arose while I was "in the woods" (though technically speaking, we were in the desert). I noticed it is a place where I felt simultaneously the most detached and attached to my day to day life; detached in that the physical routine was very much atypical, but attached in that while in a state that is so stripped back, what does remain of the routine, my thoughts, attention, and even expressed personality felt very closely tied to who I am and what I care about. I felt I was able to feel my closeness to those 'core' things for the first time in a while. It made me want to examine what it was exactly that captured my attention in a foreign context that made them so important to me, when in my day-to-day they do not feel very significant at all and mostly fade into the background. I would like to spend more time in stripped back states like this to think about it some more, and I understand now why some more solo time might be good for that.

some noise, or the stars