2023 Annual Review
This year, on a Monday in December, I found that my inbox empty. I had just spent twenty minutes on the phone with a contractor, insisting we find a way to pay them. My desk is clean. I felt a hectic yet undirected urgency; I'm doing this to avoid that. And I think that is writing this annual review of 2023.
I've had an end-of-year review practice for almost a decade, and, in the last few years, I've written a letter like this. The process for reviewing the year is mostly templated. The spine of the answers come from a notebook where I record notes daily--what has happened, passages from books, articles, photos and anything that resonates with me. In that same notebook I summarize, weekly, as I go through the year. And then, at the end of the year, I answer a set of questions about my year--"What was your favorite art from the year?" and "What did you do for your physical health?" and "Did you meet any new friends?"--combing through my weekly reviews for good answers. I try to pull out a few themes, write this letter, and then do some next year planning, sometimes coming up with a word, or phrase, for the new year.
Daily questions, weekly summaries, annual reviews, all of this is now routine and practice. Without these, the fullness of the year is hard to take in.
This year, the 2023 review reminded me: a February trip to Ojai, a public speaking course I took, Easter, doing the Homeless Count again, and an early May date night with Amy. And it triggers the recurring insight that February's "today" of playing Uno with Jack, listening to Nick Drake is a distant memory to December's "today" of Jack's obsession with ducks, and replays of David Byrne's confusion at whose house this is. Just looking at what happened on a day in May, I get to experience some amazement and gratitude for what we're able to do--whose life is this?--and remember, in real time, how fast my kids grow. It reminded me of the planning for 2023, how my phrase for 2023 was "Give everything the time it deserves." By February 2023, I had probably forgotten it. But I take this practice seriously, and the Annual Review is both something I dread and look forward to.
Moments stand out. For Halloween this year, June dressed as Bluey, Jack was a duck. Amy took them to trick or treat; I stayed to pass out candy. I sat on my couch and waited for the doorbell to mostly not ring. And at some point, I had the distinct thought: "Shit, I have to text my mom a photo of the kids. She'll bug me soon, she's probably already annoyed at not getting a photo..." But then, a realization: she had passed away in May.
My mom resists an easy summary; this is not the place for a eulogy. She lived a long, complicated life, especially complicated by the stroke she suffered a decade ago. The stroke and the subsequent pain and suffering, that wound too is still raw--the fact of her stroke is still more challenging to me than the one of her death.
She was a connector of the highest order--she had a network of people she talked with, hunted down, cajoled visits from, stalked. Aunts, uncles, a family friend, a distant relative, a high school friend.
Once, on a vacation with my friend Eric, we watched her sit in the sun, the left side of her body lame from the stroke, make one-handed phone call after phone call, loudly, for hours. He told me later, "She rolls phone calls like a Hollywood agent." Later, she would share some of those updates with anyone around her. For the past few years, it has been mostly bad news. This person passed away, that person was in the hospital. She was 'worried' about a family member; she could make anyone feel, palpably, worry. These constant bad news updates annoyed me, usually. And now, months after her passing, that invisible network of aunts and uncles and family friends and high school people and peoples whose names I know but only through some tragic detail from my mom, they mostly don't exist for me. And I find myself missing even the bad news.
I miss her. And the grief that I felt in her passing, that was a major part of how I experienced this year. It changed and grew and lessened and had a habit of coming in at the strangest times, but the grief dominates my memory of the year.
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I did some things this year. I taught a class. In fact, I taught it three times, each new wave learning something new. Putatively, the class was about this thing I'm writing now: the daily, weekly and annual reviews, how to take notes, store them digitally, retrieve them.
But the course ends up pulling in people, like me, that have deep desire for change, but some inability to understand that need. Often that need for change manifests itself in 'just doing something' leads them to this very tactical class: how to take notes.
And after the last class, a student emailed me. The subject line got me: "Help me, I am drowning with potential." We went back and forth a few times, we talked about things about our lives that we appreciated, how to talk about our histories and practices so that we could see what is working for both of us. Her list: studying, learning dance, movement, professional accomplishments. And she wanted to know what to do with her potential.
I gave some advice, and like all advice, I really was giving it to myself. I wrote: What would "thriving" be for you? It helped me to realize that my answer was hazy and not fully formed. I wrote that my 'thriving' was a sense of "ease, a spirit of helping others, and something hard-to-describe about being really perceptive about the world and communicating it effectively so that others can see it as well." I do want all these things. And, in giving me the opportunity to just write that sentence, teaching the course was well worth my time.
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But I mostly didn't do things. It was truly amazing to have long periods of significant unstructured time. I like this quote from William Bridges' Transitions:
"Without quite knowing why, people in the middle of transition tend to find ways of being alone and away from all the familiar distractions. Perhaps it is a long weekend in a borrowed cabin on a lake, or perhaps it is a few days in a city hotel...'I didn't do much of anything.' we report on our return. And we feel a little defensive, as though we had failed to deliver what we had promised."
At the beginning of the 2023 year, I had some notion that the free time would miraculously and automatically, almost thusly, lead to something. Well, it didn't--not in the way that I expected it to, at least. While the clouds opened, the rain didn't come. I didn't write a novel, or walk Spain. But the time, and the lack of something, has made me more conscious of my time, my projects, where and how they fit together.
And I became more conscious that I have these unstated desires, walking Spain or writing a novel, that linger and aren't worked on, and often unexpressed. Sometimes just writing them down, or sharing, makes them go away or change. In February, I tried to pull together a plan to take over a magazine. I wrote then: "I want to spend my time on something I love, while bringing to bear the experience, operator know-how and investor relations I've been fortunate to hone." This remains true, while I'm not sure that running a magazine is the best way to do this. But it helped to put it in an email, play with the words, say it aloud.
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In taking away the day-to-day of work, I've realized a large part of my mental life over the past almost twenty years has been an obsession with work, and, relatedly, an obsession with accomplishments--of doing things, and being recognized for it. And the need for credit, for approbation, if they don't come from work, or from my Mom, shifts to other areas of my life, making them unworkable--I find myself overbearing on Jack, or frustrated with Amy for some silly thing that I'm obsessing over--"It's not the coffee mug in the sink, it's the spirit of the coffee mug in the sink!"
I also realized that the crazy, always-on pace that came from demanding jobs, working in worlds where there was always someone, some email, some ping, some issue, some outage, some deal to handle, I missed that. Without a job, days would go by without an email or phone call. I felt seasick and confused. This dual realization--the pace and contents of life were unworkable and that I somehow craved it--it is a hard, diminishing thing to realize. I was not this rational being who just craved order; I was both responsible and dependent on non-order.
And I'm also realizing how it takes time to do anything. Clean dishes from the dishwasher take approximately eleven minutes to put away. Folding a load of laundry, usually almost thirty minutes. When I go to yoga, it takes me ten minutes to drive there, but I don't like to rush, so I give myself twenty. If I take a class as a student, I need double the 'classroom time' to be able to process the material, and more importantly, why it's important to me. If I teach a class, I only get comfortable the second or third time saying the things, so if I want to get good at it, I should likely start, start well before I'm ready.
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In my 2020 Annual Review, I summarized that we "quickly adapted to lockdown and pandemic lifestyle. While the first part was novel and the rest dreary and groundhoggy, life did move on." Well said, 2020 JC.
Later in that pandemic year review, were these two bullets:
- Really want to get to a place where my time is more important than simply work time.
- Really want to start prioritizing important life things within my life.
2023, if it was anything, was a deep realization of these two bullets. That space and freedom from "fulltime work" hasn't exactly been what I anticipated--it doesn't have a directed outcome. And that 'prioritizing important life things' has both an active element, as well as being open to the 'things within my life.'
And, like these realizations about the time needed to fold laundry or the realization that I sometimes desperately seek approbation, or even the realization that I can be embarrassed and in awe of a one-armed woman rolling calls and miss her deeply, or that I need to say the things that I want, even if it's hard, or even that semi-understanding of why I feel compelled to write down, for years, the things that resonated with me, all of these things take an unfathomable amount of time to commence and build and eventually, get good at.
And so, I end 2023 with the thought I had at the beginning: Give everything the time it deserves. Not what time I think it should take or would be convenient. But what it does, in fact, deserve. Thanks for a good year.
Appendix
Favorite Sentences I wrote this year:
Watermelons, stacked sometimes ten high and dozens of rows deep, would travel on trucks from Florida, or as the summer wore on, from the Carolinas, Georgia and eventually Virginia, to a very humble loading dock in the Strip District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There, we would systematically unload these heavy delicates into cardboard bins, to be shipped off to grocers throughout the Northeast of the US.
Favorite Sentences I read:
"The longest way is the most efficient way."
John Ashberry
Best compliments I received this year:
"I genuinely appreciate how you take a plain subject to something deeply meaningful to how we can navigate life as individuals."
"I think that many of the people on that call were there because it was JC, me included, at least judging by what people were saying. His deep-set humility in conversation and style allows the attendees to make many of their own mental links and jumps. It's a unique skill to facilitate without facilitating."
"I hope you never overlook the impact you made on my life. I'd never had a mentor before you and I haven't really had one since. You taught me how to lead with poise and class. And whether it was your intention or not, you showed me a lot about how to be a man."