Resolutions
I am not in a position to give advice
Updates: It’s the last day to order a print copy of my anti-tech pamphlet (U.S. only). And I just released a Christmas song! This might be my greatest musical contribution thus far, a sad fact when you consider that it features the word “Santa.” Listen, enjoy, and send to anyone who’s sick of the existing Christmas soundtrack.
I am not in a position to give advice. Unless, that is, you are looking for advice on the following two subjects:
Initiating and sustaining an unhealthy romantic relationship
Earning a modest living from art, only to piss it away on international moves
Still, this is a special and transformative time of year, so I feel inclined to share some small things that have worked for me:
Finish your books. Every December, I set aside a few days to power through my half-finished books. Sure, I sometimes abandon a book because it’s bad, but I also just get side-tracked. It only takes a few hours to finish a book, and it’s a nice way to pass a winter afternoon. (Here’s a list of what I read in 2024.)
Demolish your to-do list. This one is brutal but you’ll thank me for it. Again, you’ll need to set aside a day or two. Divide your list into “not gonna happen,” “not gonna happen right now (for reasons beyond dread and/or laziness),” and “doable.” Get rid of the first category, set aside the second, and power through the third. Expect dull chores, nerve-wracking emails, visits to the post office and hardware store. You will be tempted to turn back. You will not turn back. You will feel amazing when you’re done.
Plan your New Year’s Resolutions. I have a lot of thoughts on this, so I’m going to break free of the list format to share them.
The goal of self-improvement is to close the gap between the existing self and the ideal self. Sometimes, this means acceptance. For example, I have always wanted to be a runner. Many people enjoy running, even find it addicting. I am not one of those people. For me, running is painful at worst and boring at best. Through sheer willpower, I have on occasion managed to keep up a running practice over months. Inevitably though, I stop. And then I convince myself to try again. Closing the gap required me to stop trying
There are times when trying is worthwhile. When I was a 20 year old college drop-out with no career prospects, my New Year’s resolution was to use my sketchbook every day. I didn’t have to draw a big elaborate composition—even a single dot of ink counted—it was just about consistency. Over the course of the year, I learned to draw. More importantly, I learned to like drawing. I no longer had to force myself to do it. By December, I had closed the gap. I was an artist.
My most recent resolution, in 2023, was to cure my insomnia. This was a physical and psychological battle. My sleep had been awful for years. I had not felt well rested for a single moment during that period. I was close to giving up hope.
I started the year by going cold turkey on sleep aids. I’d been taking up to 10 Benadryls a night, basically poison. Without the pills, I could only sleep for a few hours. Still, I forced myself to get out of bed the moment I woke up. At three in the morning, I would make a cup of tea and begin my day. I felt sick with exhaustion. My thoughts ceased to make sense. I once screamed for no reason, then thought I had imagined it. (I hadn’t, unfortunately.) I became afraid of myself. Even my organs were too tired to perform their tasks—my heart rate low, my bowels stubborn. Then, a month in, I had my first good sleep. I experienced an almost religious gratitude. Recovery was looking more plausible by the day. Then my relationship fell apart.
It would be generous to describe this relationship as intact enough to fall apart. The relationship had been wrong from day one, but I had never loved anyone so much. Unhappiness seemed a small price to pay for love. As the year wore on, our fights stretched later and later into the night, until I would find myself shivering at a bus stop while the sun rose over London. (My boyfriend didn’t like me to stay over.) Still, I felt certain that we were only one talk away from perfect harmony; if that talk had to take place after midnight, so be it. I could repair my sleep once we were married.
Love is an assault on sleep. When things are good, you stay up late. When things are bad, you stay up late. When things end, you hardly sleep at all.
It ended in September. The heartbreak was a a depressing stimulant, a sober trip. I gave up on rest, too haunted by memories to close my eyes. I wasn’t thinking about the fights, the late-night bus rides, the ensuing exhaustion, but the good moments, the riverside walks and dinners at our favorite pub, the mugs of tea in bed, the singalongs and hot showers and soccer games in the street, the first time I saw him dance, what he wore, how he would layer two sweaters in lieu of a coat, how one of his boots was coming unstitched. The pictures on his walls: a woodcut landscape, a charcoal portrait of Bob Dylan, an abstract watercolor by me, surely gone by now. How the last time I visited, I tried to memorize those pictures, then changed my mind, tried not to memorize them, but it was too late, the memories had already moved in, evicting sleep in the process.
Then the New Year arrived. It was January 2024, and I once again resolved to cure my insomnia. Friends, I stand before you now, 12 months later, and have the immense pleasure of announcing that I cured my insomnia.1 (It probably helped that I stayed single.)
What I am saying is that I believe in the power of a thoughtful and realistic New Year’s Resolution. I believe in the human capacity for change, especially during the holiday season when you’re out of your routine, consumed with festivities and reunions, travel and time off, all of it conspiring to create the critical distance needed to ask yourself: is this how I want to live?
For most of us, the answer is yes and no. I’ll go first: I am a happy person, blessed with great friends, a moderately attractive physique, and the incredible fortune of living off my art, but I will be frank with you: I have made mistakes. Big mistakes. This year, this month, even this week. (I haven’t made any today but the night is young). I have let people down. I have lied for no reason. I have lied for good reason, which is even worse. For every promise I have kept, I have broken five. (Feel free to reach out and add to that figure if I’m forgetting you.) I have spent every penny I’ve earned this year, and then some. There’s an apartment full of my belongings in Berlin, a room full in London, a basement in Connecticut, a closet in Missouri, and a cupboard in New Hampshire. My lifestyle is contingent on the generosity of people I’ve left behind.
While we’re on the subject of my personal failings: I remain addicted to the internet. Despite all my anti-tech activism, I still struggle to resist a good screen. Don’t worry, I will never go back to a smartphone, but give me a wifi connection and I will check my email a thousand times a day. I just checked it right now. There was an email from my bank. I don’t feel any better.
I also got back on the dating apps this month. Give me a break, I feel compelled to say in my defense. It’s been a loveless year. And while I know from experience that dating apps are net-negative for society and the soul, I can’t deny that a flirtatious digital exchange does take the edge off a dry spell.
Why feel ashamed for succumbing to digital temptations when they’re designed to tempt? The tech corporations want me to blame myself for doing exactly what they want me to do. I fell into their trap not because I’m a bad person, but because I’m a person. So how do I get out?
Take a month off social media. I’m planning to log off for the month of January. (I’ll still write this newsletter.) I’m not yet in a position to delete my accounts entirely because I’ve still got a few book deals in the works, and publishers now consider online metrics when signing a new author.2 But a month should be fine. A month should be fantastic. Join me?
Find my own apartment. I keep moving into flatshares where there’s already wifi installed. It turns me into a mouse-brained junkie, constantly refreshing websites, waiting for that one notification that will change everything. Life is better when I don’t have wifi at home. I feel better, sleep better, focus better. And if I really need wifi, I’ll go to a cafe or library, which serves to get me out of the house.
Have a separate writing computer. The problem with our devices is that they serve every purpose at once: office, cinema, studio, mall, arcade, pub. Regardless of our resolve to focus, we end up bouncing between modes. One solution is to get a cheap secondhand laptop—I still have one in storage (Connecticut basement, in case you were wondering)—and use it exclusively for writing, or video editing, or whatever you like to do. It won’t have email or texts or social media. It will be a mono-purpose tool. It will give you your mind back.
I hope your holiday season turns out to be everything you wanted. If it doesn’t, I hope you find someone to complain to, even if that someone is a guitar, a piece of paper, a steering wheel.
Sending love from a cafe in Brooklyn,
August
I’m planning to publish a pamphlet about insomnia one day. I know from experience that sleeplessness is a hell like no other, and I’d like to share the strategies that worked for me.
My longterm goal is to permanently log off, and furthermore to make this move possible for anyone else who feels financially/professionally chained to the internet. If you’re interested in learning more, you can sign up for a mailing list here.
Your beauty in writing is your honesty. It also comes through in your paintings. I hope there will be more in the new year -- I have two and they need more friends lol.
I am new to your writings, and I have to say that I love your style, your way of expressing thoughts, how you articulate your place in the universe. I do have a couple of observations.
1. I used to take 1 Benadryl every evening to help me sleep. I've never known anybody who took 10. But my point here is that there are some substantial studies done at major medical schools that show that continued, regular use of Benadryl can cause Dementia in older adults. Also true of any sleep aid that uses the same active ingredient as Benadryl. Check it out...I no longer use Benadryl.
2. I can't believe that any man worth a plug nickel would send his girlfriend out on the street by herself after midnite to catch a bus. I find the fact that he would let you go out late, by yourself, standing at a bus stop, in our crime ridden society...i don't have the words to express my anger. He doesn't deserve you.
Anywho....please keep on writing....i may become one of your biggest fans.