where do you start?
moving from reflection → intention
Welcome to the second season of sense of self (say that 3x fast)!!
For whatever reason, the world decided that we’re supposed to hit the ground running in January. I’m guilty of this too in some ways: I scheduled a long-overdue DMV appointment (a very overstimulating way to start off the year), co-hosted a jam-packed weekend of events, and fully planned to write two newsletters this month…alas, here we are again at the tail end of January. (I panicked to my roomie last week how I was behind!!! on my substack already, and she gently reminded me I only feel behind because of my self-imposed deadlines…you can’t reason with artists.)
But if I could absolve myself of all general responsibilities, I’d choose to amble through this month: stopping when I feel like it and taking ample time to prepare for the months ahead. Also, if you live in a cold-weather climate, January is when true winter begins. (Visiting Copenhagen in the winter convinced me that the Danish really got it right with hygge…the wintry holiday glow gets thrown out immediately with everyone’s dead Christmas trees here.)
My point being, January is a weird month. We’re being asked to be highly productive despite clear reason (and inclination) to hibernate.
But as I’ve mentioned, I’m a perennial optimist: I do enter each year believing it’ll hold great things even if I don’t have a clear idea of what that actually means. So before the throes of winter crushes that optimism, I make it a point to carve out time to craft my intentions for the months ahead. It helps me mentally ease into the overwhelming possibilities by sketching out what the year might look like. Where can I go? What’s already on the calendar? What do I want to do with the many days ahead?
Settings goals or intentions can be incredibly daunting if you don’t know where to start. As I’ve been writing this, I’ve chatted with different friends about their intentions for the year, which has been a really fun peek into everyone’s brains and how they approach all of this. Unsurprisingly: I’m surrounded by quite a few type A-ers using full Google sheets to track their goals. On the flip side, another friend decided that one of her intentions was getting better at gift-giving (simply inspired by a successful birthday gift purchase). Many others are still figuring it out!
Everyone finds inspiration in their own way, so I think it’s important to find whatever motivates you. If you’re not into the traditional rigidity of goal-setting, perhaps you’d like:
Choosing a word for the year. A profound way to ground yourself and definitely works best if you have a particular feeling you’re seeking out of life. This requires distilling your feelings into one singular idea, but gives you a lot of room to decide how you want to carry it out. For example: the word multifaceted was really resonating with me when I turned 27 as I realized how much I hated being boxed into one persona, and was also limiting myself in some ways. Thus, I made it a point to continue expanding on all of my interests (like shooting on film).
Vision boarding. Manifestation believer or skeptic, this is a fantastic exercise in visualizing aspirations. The goal here is to capture what you’re drawn to in your subconscious on paper…so you can walk way with an actualized image of it all. It can also be as simple as a Pinterest board or literally screenshots on your phone. (Though, collaging is such a popular style now that Pinterest made Shuffles, other apps like Landing Space are thriving, and I see vision boarding events pop up all of December and January).
Making a bingo card. A new one I found via Tiktok! It’s another way to gamify goals and visualize them beyond just a list. From what I’ve seen, it’s helpful to give yourself the free space in the middle and throw in some easy spaces (like “turn 30”) to offset the bigger ones (like run a half marathon).
More of x / Less of x. Similar to this year’s “Ins / Outs” list. A dichotomy structure is helpful for some brains. It’s all about choosing what you want to emphasize, and you can flip a concept to make it fit on the other side of the list too (like more rest vs. less burnout). I personally think it’s more interesting the more specific you get! I tried an Ins / Outs list this year which was pretty fun to think about my latest societal gripes…like the takeover of QR codes.
Setting intentions. What I’ve found myself gravitating to in recent years. Intentions can feel kind of nebulous since they’re essentially soft goals (or motivations for goals): less tangible, but can definitely inspire a tangible outcome. I personally love the freedom getting to decide my own interpretation of these. For example, one of mine last year was Prioritize going to things I love, even if it’s by myself and it simply gave me the motivation I needed to buy a last-minute ticket whenever I had a free evening alone.
In short: the approach you choose doesn’t matter, so long as you leave with personal incentive. Some people can think of an intention and commit to it on the spot, but it honestly takes me almost an entire month! I love to make and play by my own rules, and because I can’t help but iterate, my rules change every year (…I’m on a neverending path to precision). So I don’t necessarily follow an exact process, but I did try to formalize it below in a way that’s easy to follow. Personally, all I believe that matters in the end is taking your time to really drill down into the what and why before committing to the how.
1. reflection
There are some general frenzied rituals that many of us ascribe to at the end of the year – like that sudden urge to spam post all the photos you never posted – which make you feel like you’ve gotten a good idea of how the year was. That doesn’t (in my opinion) replace setting aside dedicated time to reflect on how you feel about the year and how you’re leaving it. Otherwise, January really just feels like a continuation of December.
So I made a plan for how I could leave 2023 and enter 2024 with my desired headspace: on the 26th, I flew back to the city from my parents’ to give myself a full week to reset. It gave me a few days off to just loiter about the city and finish up my December newsletter.
On the 29th, I went to a café with my friend Christine, armed with our iPads and Sarita Walsh’s questions and Erika’s prompts. We spent about an hour or so doing our own thing (jotting down our answers to questions, browsing for inspiration) and then shared out our answers with each other. Verbalizing my initial reflections to someone else was new for me, but I loved it! Beyond accountability, there’s something very sweet about sharing your baby inklings of a dream with a good friend. We commemorated the whole process with a drink after.
On the 31st, I really wanted to end the year on a few notes: honoring my body (with an afternoon restorative yoga class), being inspired (watched Poor Things in the evening), and celebrating with friends (midnight champagne toast at a local dive). And of course, getting home and in bed by 1am.
2. ideation
When I woke up on New Year’s Day, I was energized and ready to pick up where I left off a few days prior. I made breakfast, then promptly headed out to a café for another journaling session.
Post-reflection, the hope is that you now have a pretty good idea of what you felt fulfilled by versus what felt lacking in life last year. It’s time to focus instead on the looming unknown: what might bring me fulfillment? And if you don’t worry about how realistic it is to do everything, this is the really fun part. I spent an hour thinking about what I desired out of the next year (or just in life) and wrote down everything that came to mind. No specific prompts – though sometimes it’s helpful to go through general categories like personal, wellness, finances, career – simply brainstorming ways I’d like to spend my time and energy. I’ll also flip back to my reflections and previous year’s intentions to get inspiration. This page usually ends up being messy clusters of any and every idea that’s crossed my mind in recent memory.
A lot of what I write up ends up being creative ambitions, like: Plan my 30th bday (and make it better than last year’s?!), Revamp my website (dread), Publish a zine (with all of my free time xo).
3. curation
Once I’ve amassed all my ideas, I start to look for any similar themes. I’ll circle things that stick out to me as particularly exciting, draw lines between ideas, add in notes to build upon those ideas. The goal is to be picky: if I had to choose, what exactly is resonating with me? (Side note: to any other designer, this process seems pretty obvious in context of me being a designer by trade…but I didn’t realize that I was very much following a design process until I tried to document this in writing, ha.)
I’ll rewrite these connections into new lists and clusters, testing out different phrasing (because I’m particular about words), crossing out anything that doesn’t fit. This year, I landed on 3 short themes (whats), surrounded by a lot of hows (actions and small projects):
Go deeper (deepen my practices)
Archive (don’t just document)
Make it my own
Pretty good progress, so…it’s time to take a break! I spent the rest of the day hanging out with a visiting friend (hi, Jess!), lightly meal prepping, and reorganizing my closet before the return to work. There was something incredibly satisfying about the 1st landing on a Monday this year and spending it preparing for the week(s) ahead.
4. intention
Now it all comes together: the intention (what), the preceding reflection on the importance behind that intention (why), and idea for action (how). Later in the week, I transferred my scribbles into my phone notes to allow for easier revision. Even though I’m concretizing them in your inbox, I do think it’s also important to let these evolve. But without further ado, my 2024 intentions:
Intention: Go deeper (deepen my practices)
Reflection: I was proud of my writing practice coming out of last year and was thinking about how I could grow in it. Would publishing more frequently force me to write and edit faster? Or would it be better to join a writer’s group to hone in on my skills? I grouped writing with other interests that felt like they needed additional dedicated time and resources.
Action: Investing in tools that encourage and build upon things I enjoy. I really liked watching movies in theatres last year, so debated on an AMC / Regal / Alamo pass before finally landing on a BAM membership. (Free membership for a year through IDNYC, which gets me discounted $8 movies – realistically I don’t need to see a unlimited films every month. And it’s in walking distance!) I also finally purchased small things that I’ve been meaning to for months, with the hope of making my day-to-day interests more enjoyable: a planner, new coffee grinder, flower shears, etc.
Action: Researching! (In: Doing your own research.) Instead of consuming films, exhibits, books at face value, I want to get into the practice of going one step further. I love learning! So I’ve started an ongoing list titled “Research” to add anything I generally want to do a deep dive on (topics, people, concepts) or articles to read.
Other related actions: Start therapy (a post-Japan priority), find a writing workshop or a consistent writing space, continue with Friday morning run club with the Brooklyn girlies.
Intention: Archive (don’t just document)
Reflection: Documenting my life is second nature. I’m often left with thoughts, photos, videos, half-baked ideas that never see the light of day because I lose steam when it comes to actually doing something with all of it. I liked that writing gave me a clear (and very public) archive of how I was feeling and thinking every month. But to curate well, you also need consistent content…so committing to the routine of cataloging is key for this. This means I’m pretty number-motivated for this one because it tracks my ability to stick with it!
Action: Daily outfit snap (366 photos for leap year). Heavily inspired by this! Nothing fancy. I’ve been taking subpar mirror selfies to see the pieces I gravitate towards or how I repeat outfits.
Action: Weekly R.E.C.A.P. (52 videos). There was a weekly R.E.P.O.R.T. (Read, Eat, Play, Obsess, Recommend, Treat) TikTok trend last year where you would pick photos to correlate to each part of the acronym. I’m doing my own version with R.E.C.A.P. and giving myself flexibility on the exact words every week (generally something like Reading, Eating, Creating, Admiring, Playing). A fun wordplay and curation exercise!
Other related actions: Biweekly writing piece (26 newsletters), which I’ve already forgone…maybe I’ll aim for double the sends from last year. And monthly collage-journaling (12 spreads) because I love journal-tok and anything visual.
Intention: Make it my own
Reflection: This one is more fun! It came from some materialistic desires I jotted down: finding signature jewelry pieces and a perfume. They’re certain parts of my closet/vanity that I haven’t dedicated much thought to, and feel like gaps in completing my personal style.
Action: Nothing specific yet, I think this one will probably evolve with my whims.
Well, January comes to a close tomorrow. I’m feeling pretty inspired for the rest of the year, but we’ll see how this all holds up throughout the upcoming months…they are, after all, intentions!
If you’ve already set intentions, I’d love to know what they are – and your process (or maybe lack thereof) of getting there. And…next month I’ll be writing to you from Japan!
On repeat A lot of Goth Babe and our pengyou paint & sip playlist.
Last read Deep Work (work book clurb) and Babel (had this on my list after Yellowface and it really reminded me how Chinese-illiterate I am 😭).
Last watched All of Us Strangers (heartwrenching) and Wonka (silly).
Bonus: I wrote out this reflection → intention process in a more step-by-step format initially for our pengyou memory frames event, in case that’s more your thing.
it's going to be a good year
Love a good methodology!!! 🤎