Last December, I wrote about searching for rituals (Some things become sacred simply because you’ve chosen to do them over and over again). As we’re in the final few days of this December, I’m tickled to see that list of small rituals are mostly intact! I have my bag of skincare empties collected and ready to be recycled this week.
Instead of dropping these off throughout the year, I was interested to see which products piled up by the end. Which products did I try once, and which ones did I repurchase time and time again? (Clear winner: this good light toner.)
I’m used to feeling a lot more year-end anxiety about what I didn’t do and what didn’t change, but I’m making more of a conscious effort to focus on everything that added up this year: everything I did do and what did change from start to end. So instead of solely revisiting this idea of sanctity in the things we choose to come back to in the holiday season, I’m wondering what stuck throughout the year, too.
Numbers are a really straightforward way to think about accumulation. Specific metrics that mark change from month-to-month, like how many books read, how many miles ran. Year-end stats are just proof of cumulative repetition, all the things you did adding up to a final number by December 31st. What are the things you come back to time and time again?
A prime example: Spotify Wrapped. I listened to 86,275 minutes of music, up from 79,272 minutes in 2022. (It only sounds like a crazy number without knowing that I work, write, walk to music…and a year of 40-hr work weeks is roughly 124,800 minutes!) This year I tried writing down my predictions before going through my insights, which made it a fun little game between current Renee and past Renee.
On the whole, I’m not really a numbers person. Not because I’m horrible with numbers (thanks Dad for making me do multiplication tables at age 5). I just don’t set many numbers-based goals in my personal life, even though I know SMART goals are tried and true. Closing my Apple Watch rings is probably the closest I get! Case in point, these are the resolutions intentions I wrote down for myself in January:
Prioritize going to things I love, even if it’s by myself. (Solo trips!)
Write regularly
Find reasons to dress up
Try new things!!!
So I couldn’t care less to know how many minutes I listened to this year, but the other Wrapped insights are fun. My favorite from this year was the listener persona because it revealed how differently my friends and I listen to music. I was named a Hypnotist (You like to listen to albums all the way through, from the opening track to the final note). A friend commented, “how on brand for you to be listening to albums the way the artist intended it to be heard.” It’s true…I really am an album girlie.
But no matter how interesting and intelligent stories can be told through data, I get stuck on the idea that numbers can never capture the whole story. And perhaps it’s the sentimentality in me: to stubbornly uphold that many things in life are often unmeasurable.
How do you measure a year? Can you quantify a feeling or a memory? If change is often so intangible, how do you distinguish one year from the previous? Or is a year ultimately represented by that which is tangible?
Of course, there’s so much that happens within a year that can’t be captured, measured, described, tied up neatly with a string. Even for someone who’s obsessed with documenting life in any way possible.
One way I’ve tried, even if subconsciously, to do this is by collecting tactile memories. Despite an increasingly digital world, our life is marked by so many things. Under my bed, you’ll find boxes of playbills, brewery coasters, movie theater stubs, concert wristbands, Europe train tickets, restaurant postcards and matchbooks, photo booth filmstrips, birthday and thank you cards. When recollection fails, I love how memorabilia can be a simple reminder of something actually happening, able to trigger the most specific details in memory.
In the spirit of cumulative repetition, I find myself specifically charmed by these punch cards I’ve collected:
Funny. I like to lament about how I’m not a regular enough anywhere for a barista know my name or order (it’s on me for constantly trying new spots). But it’s pretty clear that there are still places that became my regular haunts…especially since I’ve lived on the same block for 4 years.
A year, in its finality, is perhaps the ultimate example of cumulative repetition. When you show up for life day in and day out, who do you become after 365 days?
…I’ll leave you that question to answer for yourself. I’m still answering it for myself. In the process, I tried something new by tallying up some of my year’s numbers and thinking about why they’re meaningful to me:
Echo and I hosted 10 pengyou community events, a true feat given our busy schedules and limited prep time. I took 20 flights to visit my favorite people (London, Copenhagen, SoCal, Birmingham, Iowa, Chicago). I went to 16 concerts, 2 ballets, 2 Broadway shows, and 11 movies…so one could say it was a year I chose to indulge in the arts. Half of those movies I went to watch alone, and true to my 2023 intentions, I planned 2 solo trips (DC and Paris) and attended 3 concerts on my own.
I typically don’t share much about work-related accomplishments, but Hearth made it into Times’ Best Inventions of 2023 list (not ranked, but we’re 1 of 200 total). It mostly matters because of this little interaction:
I went to the MoMA 6 times (4 visits breaks even on my annual membership cost, but I honestly just went whenever I felt like it), though I found this current exhibition probably the most compelling show of the year. Finally, in a real effort to break up my WFH lull, I completed 64 Classpass workouts and averaged 11,280 steps/day (pleasantly surprised by this number).
Most of these numbers I could compare with previous years, though I don’t really have interest in doing so. They’re an honest reflection of my year mostly because they’re a result of my life pursuits, but not because they were targets I was trying to reach. But the final number I’ll share is perhaps the only one I feel truly proud of because it’s a first: I wrote and published 12 Substack posts this year, comprised of 20,662 words.
I won’t count the hours I spent perfecting my words in hopes that something I write might resonate with at least one person. Or quantify the anxiety (and adrenaline) that comes with being heartfelt on the internet, or numerate the offline conversations I’ve had on topics I’ve written about.
This year’s commitment to Write regularly has been pivotal for me to learn how to build a true practice. I started with little faith in myself to carry through until the end of year, and now I’m ending the year with subscribers who found this baby writing practice notable enough to even support financially. (I cried at my first pledge note – thank you Jes ❤️ The best yearend gift would be forwarding my words to a friend you think would genuinely enjoy them!)
We ask ourselves a lot of the same questions each December, and I think it’s completely natural to define the year in binary terms: in numbers, in good or bad or easy or difficult. I also think the turnover of a year is beautifully transcendent and allows us to leave behind the need to define it.
As for me…I’m a perennial optimist. I’ll always measure my year by the things we find ourselves coming back to, time and time again: the people, places, thoughts and feelings. In all our imperfect, irregular, half-assed, fully-human ways. The coming and going, the meaningless and meaningful, the mistakes we hold onto and desires we let go, the selfishness in trying and selflessness of living. The persistence of pursuing growth in the way that’s only possible year in and year out – by showing up for ourselves again and again and again.
On repeat Smoke (back on a Caroline Polachek kick), Murder on the Dancefloor (IYKYK), Prescription (Remi Wolf – I neeeeed this version on Spotify)
Last listened The Daily’s The Year of Taylor Swift episode, surprisingly recommended to me by a non-Swiftie and more emotional than I expected
Last watched Saltburn (deserved to be around for the golden age of Tumblr). Poor Things is up next.
On the “before the 1st” list send this final Substack ✅, lots of boring life admin, figure out NYE plans, finish a deep room cleanout, a vision boarding sesh, fill out Erika’s 2023 prompts!
The year of Taylor Swift!! 🫡🐍
Renee! Honored ❤️🫶