#isabel 2k25

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

i didn't get a pic the past couple days when the curls were still curling but i am v. v. pleased with my haircut :)

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

i'm not gonna do a big year in review post like i did last year because on a strictly numerical level (a) i probably technically failed most of my resolutions and (b) i don't actually have the data because one of the ones i definitely failed was logging my habits to keep up, which i stopped doing in september when work got crazy and never picked back up. still ultimately i feel good about how things went down, generally. i didn't quite make this the year i got back into reading but i read more than i had the year before for sure, and i saw a lot of movies, most of them interesting or enjoyable, and some other art, too (the jenny holzer installation at the guggenheim, the ibsen play starring jeremy strong). i definitely listened to way more music. i got so good at hydrating by the end of the year that now i feel off if i drink less than 100 ounces a day lmao. i don't think i hit a 50% workout rate but i had a june that took working out off the map for several weeks and then when i tried to get back into it at the level i'd been doing before it sucked and i needed way more rest days for a long ass time; lesson learned for the future, and right now i feel like i have a good routine going. steps was kind of a similar story but this fall was pretty successful (having a zillion clients all over the goddamn city was helpful in that regard). i do want to be more proactive about it on a day to day basis because i do think it might help me sleep to hit that 10k or so (and i think it helps with soreness too, preventatively and amelioratively, which spellcheck says is not a word but should be!!) but i'm feeling more and more like flexibility is the name of the game in some things so while i will be tracking them daily/weekly/monthly this year, i will ultimately consider it a win if i get to december 31 with 3,650,000 behind me.

i fell off on logging and journaling, and never really got a handle on doing mobility work or meditating, but i finished the year feeling like while on the one hand it was nice to know i had enough structures in place to make it through my busy season a little on edge but never really losing my mind, i also felt like ignoring these things completely for a while ultimately as i look back drew my attention to why i wanted to make space for them in the first place; the morning routine stuff is where i get it together enough to check in on my life, process some stuff, and make adjustments as necessary; doing some kind of mobility stuff, even if it's just hitting the foam roller at bedtime, is just physically necessary if i want to keep working out the way i have been working out and i have to stop acting like i can have one without the other.

i decided for 2024 i didn't need to set a guideline around internet use the way i had in 2023, just an intention to be mindful, and, um, well that was a huge failure but an instructive one; again, lesson learned (and it's actually crazy how much even a guided 5 meditation in the morning alters my basic instincts for the rest of the day about when i want to Scroll). i didn't floss........ i should floss.

i did okay with doing Life Tasks semi-regularly and the attitude of "20 minutes Task Time per day" was helpful in some ways but didn't address the Giant Ever Growing Backlog Of Tasks I Have Been Putting Off For Months To Years, which suggests a need for a new approach; this year i'm gonna try a tip i read somewhere to plan out your tasks on a weekly basis, including scheduling them, not just throwing them on a "weekly to-do list," and aim for 5 a week. i gave up on 20 minutes of digital tidying per day and i think the answer there is just to not set a minimum above the minimum, so to speak. if i delete 5 emails or unsubscribe from 1 thing that counts.

i don't know how i wound up doing with my goal to have One Human Connection Per Day (At Least Half The Days Of The Year) but i had a lot of fun this year and i am finishing it feeling in many ways still awkward and neurotic but more connected and secure than i was a year ago, and feeling almost overwhelmed with how true it feels to say "my life is full of doing fun stuff with people i like" after all the years i spent convinced this was completely impossible for me to achieve. this year i don't think i'm going to slot this into my daily habits, partly because sometimes multiple things happen on one day or i text someone to initiate plans-making on the same day someone texts me, partly because the advice i saw about doing stuff also recommend task-batching and i think there may be some utility to that here as well, and partly because well i do have a schedule that is incredibly variable by week and season and this past fall for example i'm not sure i could have handled much more in september/october than free store + one fun thing a week which is more or less how it shook out for a while there. i also don't think i'm going to set a number because, well, i feel good about it right now. i do want to set a non-quantifiable intention to keep getting a little braver about forging new connections or deepening ones that are shallow but seem promising (serial killer way to say "making friends" sorry i am still in some ways quite Insane about this topic, the prime locus of my insanity for many years), and within that specifically to keep getting better at going to local stuff even when none of my closest local friends are going to be there as my security blanket lol. this year early on i finally texted someone i knew from pantry biz with whom i had exchanged mutual "we should hang out sometime" sentiments and it turns out that they're one of those people where once someone else makes the first move they welcome you in a lot so that the "hey, wanna catch a movie or something?" text i sent while deep breathing (because i am Insane) wound up leading pretty directly to a bunch of other incredibly fun 2024 memories, which is like almost irritatingly on the nose as a life lesson but otherwise very nice. relatedly (to texting that stresses me out because of my Problems) i want to get better at texting people back in a timely fashion and also at being more impulsive in a positive way about sending texts when people are on my mind.

the two things i feel real regret over this year are the reading thing and also writing... not a great year for writing, although i can at least look back on i would say three newsletters i'm proud of and one fic i was very glad to complete. i also did... okay... at contributing at the singles jukebox now that We're So Back on a monthly schedule. but i wrote basically nothing other than the occasional blurb after sometime in may and that feels bad and also suggests i need to find some way to integrate writing more reliably into my routine. i don't want to set a word count goal because part of what's going on is that i have some projects i'm picking away at that are more demanding of planning & brainstorming & slower more considered writing than my usual (beloved!) genres of Blogging and Fanfiction but i do think it needs to be quantifiable because ummm otherwise i simply will Not. so i am thinking this is a daily goal too. same goes for reading and in that case i do think i can set an outcome goal, which is 50 books.

ok well i guess this wound up being a year in review post anyway lmao. whatever it's capricorn season it's my time to shine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! neatened up resolutions post for my own ease of reference incoming shortly

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

ok ok 2k25 goals intentions etc.:

daily, success threshold met at 183 days: journal, meditate, log my little habits and other countables, work out, drink 100 ounces of water, experience art, do some kind of mobility work even just a little bit of moving my butt on the foam roller, digital tidying of any kind, floss, write or work on a piece of writing even if it's not ready for writing (ykwim), no Scrolling before 10 p.m. (Intentional Posting such as this doesn't count) room re-set (a habit i had in 2023 decided i didn't need in 2024 and hugely missed once i had buried myself in a horrible pile i did not feel capable of tackling for like three months); 10k steps average for the year by 11:59 p.m. on december 31st

weekly: 5 Life Tasks Of Some Kind; try out weekly self-planning sessions although this is not a resolution because well what if i don't like it!

yearly: read 50 books; work about a thousand hours although this is not so much a "goal" as the result of me looking at my time tracking app and seeing if i can use this data to organize my life in a way that makes me feel less stressed about what is essentially my part-time job so i'm not gonna sweat the difference too much in either direction; i'm not gonna put my income goal on the internet but i do have one.

unquantified intentions: eat more vegetables/get to a place by the end of the year where i don't feel the need to resolve this again; be better about apartment tidiness maintenance tasks (an ounce of prevention...); be a more considerate and more proactive texter; keep working on showing up even when it's a little bit scary; i know i have writing as a daily goal but i'm also gonna say that an intention is to get to the end of the year feeling like i have a sense of how writing fits into my life as a regular practice instead of my historical feast or famine approach (which, to be clear, i don't think i'm ever going to be a nice normal Write Exactly 90 Minutes A Day gal.... so mostly i'm talking about avoiding the famines); keep jukeboxing; keep listening to new (generally and also to me) music; get back into/better at tarot

vibe: one other thing that came up when i was reflecting on 2024 was how much fucking time and mental energy i poured into being Totally Insane about how repulsive i am in many dimensions... this is not anything remotely new but i'm deciding now that i am over it and thus determining by executive decision that actually i am a hot fun genius and everybody awesome wants to be my friend.

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

i almost bailed on new year’s because i was sleepy and the weather was horrendous, but it was three short blocks from my apartment and i’d said i’d go so i really had no excuse; when i got there for a moment i was worried it was populated exclusively by Fashionable Gay People, but then i peered into another room and found the mutual aid contingent and was relieved even as i remembered with amusement a few parties ago, back in october, someone remarking, not harshly, on our collective habit of going to parties to talk to the same 10-20 people we already know. the first thing i did in 2025 was go see no, the gael garcia bernal movie about the campaign to vote no on the 1988 plebiscite on pinochet; the second was family brunch; the third was watching the shop around the corner and confirming i am truly jimmy stewart pilled now. thursday i got a great haircut and hung out in the mulberry street library reading js&mn (i have most recently arrived at the portion after strange comes home from the war) and met a friend for dinner before seeing teeth, my second time getting around to a michael r. jackson musical just in time for closing week; not a perfect show but a wild time and i’m very glad he gets to be out there doing his thing. friday i got pleasantly fucked up and went out dancing until 3:30 in the morning with like ten people all of whom once again know each other because we like making it possible for people to get free stuff, which i guess one day i will accept is just my life now but on some level has not yet sunk in. i thought a lot as i have been thinking a lot about how for my entire twenties and then some loneliness was the defining color in my emotional landscape and i am still awkward and neurotic and shy but that just isn’t true anymore, when i thought it would be true forever. an absurdly cool trans girl i know told me she loved my hair and i went to sleep having achieved my step count for friday and saturday mostly in the span of about four hours. saturday i thought was to be for laundry and sleep but n. said a movie was playing he remembered loving so i made it into the city (after laundry) to watch todo mudo, a 1976 political thriller with a somewhat inscrutable plot (to me, knowing nothing about italian politics after the fall of rome other than that mussolini happened) and impeccable vibes, and back at home i managed to muster up the will for full body day to hit my fifth workout of the week, because i am very tough and brave.

today i tutored for the first time in two weeks and screwed up what was supposed to by my second by forgetting my own schedule, but it’s fine. i reviewed & resolutioned & brought my mom a change of clothes at the hospital and made a little page i can duplicate in my planning app that looks just like my little notebook weekly log pages except it lives in my ipad :) i have had an extremely good staycation and already have a series of nice things to look forward to in the days ahead. i feel very lucky here at the dawn of 2025. i keep thinking that, over and over.

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

another year, another almost comically overdetermined end of year celtic cross….. like for real…. the empress, the hierophant, the high priestess, the star AND two queens all in one reading? with the king of cups in “definitely not about” in case there was any confusion? like, come on now…..

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

last night’s tarot reading continuing to be quite Cute by the way in that i drew the knight of wands as the first card & then a few hours later reading in bed reached the chapter in jonathan strange & mr norrell where we finally meet strange properly which readers may remember is titled….. the knight of wands