no goals just vibes
I’ve never known what to make of the dead week between Christmas and New Years.
Part post-holiday blues. Where the red, white, green lights and inflatable Santas and songs that sound like childhood as they crackle over the radio change from glorious to grotesque. Where the turn of the calendar looms large in my mind. The future pulled entirely into the present.
Part excitement. Pretending. As if I get to start over with the clocks. As if I'm suddenly endowed with crystal-clear foresight. As if these few days are the only chance I have to take my direction seriously.
I didn’t want to write about the New Year. I don’t have anything new to say. But writing anything else would betray what’s been bothering my brain: the future. How intense its glare is. How supple but unsteady it feels. How uncertain, amenable to change.
My next year feels like a scab picked raw. The same rote thoughts, repeated questions. The same splintered doubts. Enough atmospheric pressure behind each decision to make my ears pop. Daunted by the blank canvas—a vista of frightening freedom. Infinite choice to funnel, to process, to compute.
The boundaries of my life blurry, verging on borderless. I’m not sure if the childhood promise that “You can be anything you want,” is a blessing or a curse. Perhaps both. That’s how blessings work, isn’t it?
*
I’ve spent most of this month reminiscing.
Life never moves quickly enough, yet this year has sped by. I wake up, journal, drink coffee, write, run, read, work, walk. The whole year’s been one of those days. Putting in a good effort. Grinding forward in some undetectable direction. Unsure if I’m working hard or wasting time. Feeling both true to myself and like a soon-to-be-found-out fraud.
I think of the people I’ve met, writers I’ve found, ideas that’ve poured into my brain. Who would I be if I wasn’t immeasurably shaped by all these unpredicted things? Looking back at the delicacy of dominos, it’s hard not to be terrified to step forward.
I’m struck by how long a year is. How much can happen. How days pile up like sheets of paper, crinkle and flatten into each other. Invisible in the moment, but looking back, there’s enough to fill a book. From last January, I can only recall a few fuzzy moments, like those overexposed flickering flashbacks in movies. My past feels fiction. Played by a stunt double. Told to me by a friend. I look at old photos and don’t recognize his eyes.
I retreat to the present because it’s all I have.
*
Writing down goals and planning my months, I pretend if I try hard enough I can wrap my fingers around reality. Dig my stirrups into its wild untamed sides. Control it. But the events of my past year, even down to the painfully obvious, came unexpected, unannounced, unplanned.
Last December, I didn’t know I would live in a housing project (by accident) or work as an editor for Write of Passage twice, or write 50,000 words authoring my past, or go sober, or get hired by Noah Kagan off twitter to help sell his book, or spend the summer at my cottage, or run half marathons, or get back my hockey sweaters I thought I’d never need again, or inhale the crisp blue sky of the Rocky Mountains, or live in Argentina.
That strikes me the hardest: how wrong I was about the future. How much I didn’t know, but failed to acknowledge. The undetectable sense of certainty that covers my eyes like cobwebs. Reality has a surprising amount of detail and I’m constricted to a surprising amount of blindness.
*
I'm still unsure how much to trust in the tides of fate and how much to rely on my own buoyancy. I’m still unsure how much of my timeline has been forced or forged or fixed from the start. If it’s written in the stars or it’s me staring up and squinting my eyes, tracing my own constellations.
But my endless and proper work is to dance with the unknown, orbit gently through the highs and lows, and always, always, trust in what is difficult.
As I take Campbell’s words to heart, to follow my bliss, I’ve learned there are many detours and pit-stops and roadside distractions. And, it isn’t always blissful.
I know this next year will evade expectations. I have some semblance of a plan, but it’s mostly filled with potholes and plot holes. Foreshadowings of wonder, waiting to be filled.
I can’t promise myself much besides that I will try. God, I try.
I wonder if I’ll find what I’m looking for. If I’ll see it when I see it. If I’ll know it when I hold it.
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🖊️ what I wrote in 2023
This year I published 70 pieces on Substack and grew subscribers from 367 to 997 (plus i wrote a bunch of viral banger tweets that got 0 likes)
The “taste gap” between writers I admire and my writing still tears me up inside, but I plan to continue honing my craft to deliver increasingly high-quality and insightful essays.
To celebrate a full year on Substack, I wanted to share my three favorite posts I’ve written from 2023…
1- helping alex dobrenko with linkedin
the scariest thing i’ve ever written but also wildly the most popular
2- on meditation and morning pages
this essay captures my evolving relationship with spirituality and ritual in a vulnerable light i’d never shared before
being apart from my best friends after years of living together has been one of the biggest and hardest to cope with changes of my year
Or (this is cheating but i suck at narrowing down so) if you want a summary, I wrote a reflection on what I’ve learned in my 23rd year.
I just want to say I really appreciate you for reading my work & sticking with me. I look back at where I was with my writing last year and feel a renewed sense of hope for where this next year may take me. I’m inches into showing up as myself on the page but I’m still miles from full creative expression.
It means a lot to me that you’re here.
I hope you know how much.
👋 what i’ve been up to:
I celebrated Christmas with family and went to the zoo, but have been abruptly dragged back to work and routine. Noah’s announcing the book launch next week. With the book coming out end of January, this month is going to be intense.
✍️ quote i’m pondering:
Philosopher Simone Weil on fragility and fragility:
“Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.”
📸 photo of the week:
A special gift I got for Christmas—a handmade mug and old-fashioned coffee grinder.
Peak objects are both beautiful and useful. Beauty without utility feels vain, and utility without beauty is boring. (Utility as in “doing what it’s supposed to do”)
Thank you for reading!
fyi: The title of this piece was inspired by a short snippet from
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You got all my love,
Tommy
Stunning, Tommy. I know for sure that over the course of this past year, your writing has grown more beautiful with every word. I also know that through our interactions and brief and as virtual as they may be that you do dance with the unknown, orbit gracefully, and trust in all that is difficult and pained. Happy new year, friend.
Wishing you peace, love and contentment in the coming year, Tommy. Your writing is evolving beautifully. Super proud of you.