Good Enough

Apparently this week contains the day when most people will give up their resolutions for the new year. Reports vary on the exact day, but Strava (the fitness tracking app) and Runner's World suggest that by this point we've given up on those lofty goals and abandoned those shiny new versions of ourselves we had envisioned.

It seems reasonable; our brains are not really built to wait for reward. We have found all these tips, tricks, and hacks for establishing new habits (which resolutions often aim to set). We also share stats with each other on how long it takes to make a habit habitual - a quantifier that we can mentally manage and track against, a ray of hope. 

When something's hard, it definitely helps to know someone's done it before and exactly what we can expect. I've done this with pain (especially my body's recent reaction to my COVID-19 booster) and I find it comforting in recipes to know what it should look like at any given moment, or how long it takes for the onions to go translucent. 

We like structure and guidance, predictability and camaraderie, and once we've achieved we can feel good about it, and use that to push ourselves further. Which makes sense, but I'm proposing we see progress as achievement, and use just our action to create motivation. 

And even these are loaded words - progress can look like surviving the day. Breathing and existing is action. We are enough.

I've never really thought of myself as a Type A, but it's really hard to ignore when during your daily chats with your beau (yeah, we're cute af) 

you realise your highlights consistently involve explaining something you did, achieved, or contributed to and how it didn't live up to your expectations. I've definitely done this for a long time, but I'm sick of hearing myself at this point. I'd argue it's better to critique than throw around the positive vibes only, but maybe we (I) can see the weight of progress for what it really is. And how about we keep seeing and talking about the bigger (systemic) issues (as much as is reasonable for our individual mental health) and stop crapping on our own work. 

A few years ago, feeling a bit lost in a new place and not having found my space yet, I came up with the idea to set a one-word intention for the new year. That first year was the year of 'action'. I knew I needed to do more to learn about my community, connect with everyone and anyone I could, try out new ideas that would give me structure and bring me income (I strongly considered coding, writing, and photography, but (obviously now) all of them would have required a lot more training beyond the many free courses I attended at the time). 

Another area that piqued my interest however, were all the issues in the world I was suddenly clearer on, having had time to stop and see them. The word 'Action' guided me for the next year and led me to work in the nonprofit sector, and the rest, as they say, is history I'll drag up in a future installment.

Today I set my intention for 2022 - to be good enough. It's a guide to take me in the direction I want to go, but that won't beat me up if I don't make it - especially this one, it's a bit of a meta-intention - not to be confused with the Metaverse!

This year I will be good enough because goodness knows there's enough out there that isn't, and we (I) could probably put our brilliant selves to addressing that. And we (I) should learn to just be.

Some things that are good enough:

- Using the homemade cleaner the TikTok person said was for sinks and shelves for mirrors and taps/faucets. 

- Soaking everything that may need some level of scrubbing

- Not sending Christmas cards

- Soup from a can/tin

- Starting 8 books in a year

- Finishing 3 of the books you started

- Listening to two podcasts on repeat

- Doing 10 minutes of yoga every other day

- A blog post I write in 30 minutes (or 90 with kitty interruptions)