It’s 2023! I can hardly believe it, mostly because the last couple months of 2022 went by in a blur of illness and barf. I ended last year not just approaching burnout, but full on burned out. Many times last year, I thought back to the book Gracious by Kelly Williams Brown, which introduced me to the term AFGO, or “another fucking growth opportunity.” Although nothing terrible happened last year and I’m grateful for that, I had many AFGOs in 2022. Many opportunities to put the old ego in check, many opportunities to be extremely uncomfortable, and some really terrible mental health days.
But it was, overall, a good year! I did some things I’d wanted to do for a long time, I made new friends, my son started kindergarten, I got to see my family, I published a book and sold a book. That’s a lot! Of course I did a contemplative reflective journaling exercise because I am me, but now I’m ready to look forward. If I made my own In and Out lists like everyone on Instagram, my Out list would just be: Barf. Cleaning up barf. My kid somehow barfing on the ceiling (?). We’re leaving barf in 2022, baby!
(Barf portion of newsletter over, please proceed knowing that it won’t come up again.)
As I’ve mentioned before, I love the new year because I love hearing about everyone’s hopes and dreams and I love setting goals. But what about my goals from last year? How did I do? Here are the entertainment resolutions I made last year, because I firmly believe that new year’s resolutions should be fun things that enrich your life, not boring slogs that you feel like you should do.
Movies
-Continue watching the movies in the TCM Essentials books. I didn’t intend to watch all these movies, and that’s good because I barely made a dent. But I did watch Leave Her to Heaven. This movie got so much darker than I was expecting. Gene Tierney is such a (dangerous) babe! That lake scene, whew.
-Watch at least ten films that aren’t in English. This is one I didn’t complete, and I don’t know why because my favorite film of the year was not in English. And yet I watched maybe four non-English films this year. What am I doing with my life?
-Do The Criterion Challenge on Letterboxd. I abandoned this goal immediately because it turned out I didn’t really care about it. I’m sure it’s fun for some people, but it was just too unwieldy for me.
-Watch Harvey. I did this! It was great!
Here’s what I learned from setting movie goals: I don’t really want, or need, to be constrained by any sort of framework. Mostly I just want to go down whatever film rabbit hole seems interesting, like when I started listening to With Gourley and Rust and then watched a bunch of Yuppie Nightmare movies.
Books
-Read 100 books. I read 95, and I spent a second in early December thinking, “Should I try to quickly power through a few more so I can make my goal?” But then I realized I didn’t want to do that. The point of this goal was to encourage me to pick up a book (and/or open the Kindle app) more often than I looked at social media. I also made the number so high in hopes that, by reading more, I’d have more truly great reading experiences, and I think that part happened.
-Utilize the library. I absolutely did this one. I checked out and read so many books, which is actually why I didn’t do so great at my next resolution…
-Read the books I have. I did better about not buying so many books, but did I do better at reading the books that are sitting on my shelf at home? I did not! I simply substituted going to the bookstore with going to the library. I still love buying books and supporting other authors and there will always be some books I want to own, but this was a good way for me to see that I actually don’t need to buy that many books.
Looking back, it kind of seems like I did pretty bad at my goals. But I feel pretty good about them! I am using them to inform my watching and reading goals for 2023 though, though, which are as follows:
Movies
-Continue watching the films in the TCM Essentials books. I love having this list and I love reading the essays, even if I’m not going to systematically work my way through them.
-Watch as many Oscar nominated films as I can. I ended up doing this last year anyway, and it’s just so fun. As I’ve said before, the Oscars are my Super Bowl and I like knowing what everyone is talking about.
-Watch 10 non-English films. Yes, I’m putting this one back on the list!
-Watch The Godfather. I’ve never seen it and I feel that void all the time. I barely know what Tom Hanks is talking about in You’ve Got Mail. I only sort of understand everyone’s references to it. I need to fix this.
Books
-Read 52 books. Yes, I dramatically lowered my goal, even though it would be an extremely weird year for me if I didn’t read 52 books. I read relatively quickly and I read a lot for work, so this isn’t a difficult number for me to achieve. However, I plan on reading a few longer books this year, so I wanted to keep my goal nice and low so I can really focus on the books I want to finish.
-Read ten books that are already on my shelf. It’s honestly really embarrassing to me that I have so many unread books just sitting around. I want to read them. They all look good! Ideally I’ll read them and then pass them along to a friend or a Little Free Library, but this didn’t work out last year because I kept reading books I loved and then underling lots of passages and keeping them on my shelf.
-Re-read Little Women. Little Women is probably my favorite book of all time, and if you read my last newsletter, you know how dear the story is to me. But I haven’t read it since becoming a mom, so when Annie B. Jones posted about this book club where you simply read a chapter a day, I signed up (more accurately, my friend Lauren was like, “Are you signing up for this?” and then I was like, “Oh yeah, I should do that.”) I’m so glad I did because now I’m part of an Instagram chat full of really lovely Little Women superfans and it’s so fun.
-Read Bleak House. I’ve been wanting to join in on The Bookshelf’s Conquer a Classic since they started it, and I’m finally doing it! I have a beautiful clothbound edition of Bleak House, my little schedule, and I’m ready to go. I can’t wait for the first podcast with Annie and Hunter.
-Read Anna Karenina with my brother. Alex and I decided years ago to read Anna Karenina together but several obstacles got in our way and it hasn’t happened yet. But this is our year!
-Keep going to the library. No one can stop me. 😎 There are few things more simultaneously fun and relaxing than wandering the stacks. More stack wandering in 2023!
I have other resolutions that aren’t entertainment consumption related, too. Every year I do at least 200 days of yoga (with Adriene, naturally). This year, I want to visit every one of the Columbus Metro Parks, as well as take a lot more long walks. I’d love to make this a more social activity, so if we know each other IRL, let me know if you want to go on a walk. My main resolution this year is to explore more of the city, spend more time at museums and movie theatres, check out more restaurants (again, if we know each other IRL let’s go to dinner/breakfast/whatever!), and generally enjoy the place where I live.
I learned a lot of things in 2022, but the most important one is this: I might be an introvert, but I need social interaction to function and be happy and healthy. The pandemic has shown me that human beings are not meant to be alone, and we’re not meant to rely on only the people in our houses for all of our social interaction. Do you know how many times I’ve read/heard that statistic about how loneliness is worse for your health than smoking a pack a day? It’s a lot, because I keep reading and listening to things about loneliness to reinforce my beliefs. This year, I remembered that I’m actually quite capable of making friends, trying new things, and socializing, even if I’d let those muscles atrophy in the beginning of the pandemic, and even if I often feel like I’m bad at them. I sincerely hope that 2023 brings many more opportunities for socializing.
Last year I made a list of my 11 favorite new-to-me movies, but I don’t have that in me this year, so I’ll just tell you my one favorite: The Worst Person in the World. I still think about it all the time and I spent a few weeks at the end of summer listening to the impeccable soundtrack on repeat. The film is the perfect mix of funny and heartbreaking and I love it so much.
My favorite show was the vastly underrated Somebody, Somewhere on HBO. Truly a perfect show and I can’t wait for the second season. It was funny and often sweet without ever being cheesy (it’s also sad, so be warned). Everyone in it looks like a real person. I’m struggling to think of the last time I watched a show with such a variety of body sizes and shapes. Also all the houses look very normal, not “styled.” This show made me happy to be alive! Two separate friends told me about this show by saying “this feels like something you would write” so obviously I was destined to love it.
It’s too hard to come up with a favorite book, so instead I’ll just tell you a book that literally changed my life by encouraging me to take some concrete actions: Platonic by Marisa G. Franco. This is sort of a science book and sort of a self-help book. Franco explains the different attachment styles (mine are…nothing good, I’ll tell you that for free!) and explains why some people have a hard time with friendship, then gives actual steps people can take to make friends. I haven’t even finished it yet because I’ve been reading it super slowly and highlighting pretty much the entire book.
Okay, this is already way too long and I have to go do today’s yoga if I want to complete this year’s resolution. Do you have any fun movie or book resolutions for 2023? Let me know! I hope you’re all reading and watching super interesting things this year. See you soon.
Working for a library, I am in good company when it comes to amassing books, some of which wind up on shelves or in stacks, unread. One of my lovely colleagues shared this article about "tsundoku," and I felt very seen: https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/do-i-own-too-many-books/
I don't really enjoy reading books I own. My new approach is only buying books I've already read, just to support authors I like. I don't know what is wrong with me!