New Year’s Resolutions

Beren Guler

by Beren Guler

Story
Munich 2020 – 2024

I have a list of all the themes I want to write short stories about. Initially, it was a brilliant idea because I wanted to write all the time, and I couldn’t write about everything simultaneously. Having all my ideas piled up somewhere felt safe and productive. Taking a note of thought was the first step to developing it, right? Turns out not really. As the ideas piled up and the list got longer, every single day I couldn’t write boiled my guilt in a pressure cooker. The words I craved to get out turned into a chore overload.

I often have this urge to catch interesting thoughts and easily forgotten chores and put them into a list. The initial feeling is refreshing, as if I’m on top of everything. They later become boxes I don’t want to check because they stop being impromptu ambitions the moment I write them down. They turn into tasks assigned to me. Tasks that I don’t want to but need to do. So when I felt similar about my one unfading passion, writing, I started to think of ways to keep myself from distancing.

The holiday season is approaching, and they are putting up trees already. Remember the New Year’s resolutions? Christmas decorations made me think of all the lists I had made since I was 12, although they are getting more unpopular each year. I was never able to cross an item off those lists. It has been a general problem for me to jump from thought to thought, never actually act on one, and lose myself in the land of overthinking. It became so tiring and pointless that I did not have New Year’s resolutions for 2023. As I was riding the tram today and saw the very first Christmas tree of the year, I realized I had achieved some things this year that are major in their own little leagues. None of them were todos in a list.

One thing is being more active. I was feeling extraordinarily unelastic and stiff one day. I got up and went to a yoga class in my gym. I had been paying for that membership for months but was waiting for the right time to make a schedule and go properly. I have been going ever since that yoga class. Some weeks 3 times, some weeks 0. I tell myself that missing a week doesn’t make me break a perfect pattern, and I don’t have to quit altogether in the first inconvenience. Easier said than done. It is even harder to sustain with all the natural interruptions. The most crucial skill I acquired with therapy is to accept good things with side imperfections.

Just like that, I realized I had checked off an item I had been struggling with for a long time from a non-existing list. Pursuing perfection is aching to let go, but freeing once you can. I had been so stuck on the goal of clearing out the topics in my short story todo list that I struggled to put sentences together. So I came home and started writing this. Talking about therapy and accepting imperfection hadn’t even been on my list. Without my self-repression, without mind twists and wanna-be artistic tricks. My first short story in weeks.

© Beren Guler 2023-11-09

Genres
Novels & Stories
Moods
Hopeful, Lighthearted, Reflective, Relaxing
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