Every year when people ask what my New Year’s Resolution is, I laugh at them a little inside. Not because I don’t have a New Year’s Resolution — it’s not that I’m above it and I wouldn’t stoop to the masturbation of self-improvement, as it’s put in Fight Club — but because I don’t have … one . . . New Year’s Resolution.
“I’m learning Japanese,” I say. “I’m not going to heat style my hair.”
“I’m doing meatless Mondays and raw diet lunches.”
“I want to lose those last 10 lbs.”
That’s what I say.
Here’s what I wrote in my goal journal on January 1 2019:
Write 2000 words/day
Journal every morning
Read 5 books/month
Read New Yorker/Economist
3 Berkeley writing courses
Duolingo Japanese every day
Meditate 25 minutes/day
Run 2 days/week
Yoga 5 days/week
10,000 steps (got a Fitbit for Christmas)
Clean apt Wednesday
Gun Violence phone banking Thursdays
anti-inflammatory diet
It didn’t look exactly like that. I put down my dreams for the year: publish a novel, learn Japanese, stand on my head, become fucking zen. I was using a micro-goals formula. My goals for the year are divided under 5 categories: Career, Health, Personal, Volunteer, and Writing. Then I write down micro-goals: write a thousand words every day, 5 minutes on Duolingo, 60 minutes of yoga 5 days/week, learn to fucking meditate.
Every year, someone will say, “Careful, you need to stick to attainable goals.” To which I say, Fuck that, I am a writer. There are people put down 10,000 words in a day. I’m a worker. I sit down at my computer every morning and I do not get writing block. If I get writing block, I switch to pen and paper, and I go. I write 1000 words. Every day. Nothing will stop me. When I’m done, I will go make myself a turmeric grain bowl and I will meditate. At 3:30p.m., I will go to yoga. At the end of the day, when the sun sets and I can’t stand writing because the paper notebook on my desk doesn’t get enough light to read my illegible handwriting, I practice languages on Duolingo. At night I read. And read and read. I reread. Stephen King said writers must read 60 to 70 books every year, so I fucking read.
Tomorrow I will wake up and do it again.
I will write a second draft of my novel. I will make a healthy, leafy, lean-ass motherfucking lunch. I will write another 1000 words for my blog. I will go for a walk. I will get not 8,000 steps, but 10,000 steps, because I clicked into an article on the FitBit app where the Fitbit blog informs me of the benefits of getting not 8,000 steps but 10,000 steps. I will walk to the library to work. I will drink coconut water. I will learn to fold myself into a pretzel. A fucking pretzel. Do you hear me? This is happening. This book is happening. It’s going to pour out of my fingers because I am going to keep working.
I am going to optimize, I am going to run three miles today, and four miles tomorrow, and some day I will run a marathon and when I go to Japan I will be able to read the Hiragana script and I will be able to order sushi and teriyaki in an honorable, polite, culturally-aware, fully-formed grammatically correct sentence, and I will learn to do a handstand.
Yeah fucking right. Last week the E key fell off my keyboard.
On the same day the water was off in my building.
I would have gone to the library to work, a place where I would be able to flush a toilet and fill up on water to stay hydrated (drink 8 to 10 glasses a day!) but I was signed up for Hot Yoga on ClassPass and if you cancel on the same day, they charge you FIFTEEN fucking dollars, and I didn’t want to be late for Hot Yoga.
So I stayed home, and I didn’t get my contact lenses in before the water was shut off, so I had to pour filtered water from my SOMA filter(link included is not an affiliate link, it’s just for the people going What the fuck is a SOMA filter?) over my hands to wash them in a sanitary fashion to put in my contact lenses, and then I headed to my local cafe to buy myself lunch, since I wouldn’t be able to cook and clean up after my lunch with the water shut off.
The “Imperfect Grain Bowl” at Manny’s is amazing. But I was missing an E key on my keyboard. E is the most commonly used letter in the English language. Which is probably why mine broke. But no matter; I can write by hand anyway. I brought a notebook and a pen.
But the table I sat at had not been bussed. The dumbass lady who sat there before me didn’t realize one should really bus one’s own table at most all Order At The Counter casual joints in San Francisco.
And the sun was in my eyes. It was like the one available table and it was in a nice, atmospheric spot, with the warmth of the sun coming in through the glass, facing out onto 16th Street, and in the baking sun this dumbass’s leftover grain bowl is starting to smell like baking kale remnants.
I can’t really stand having the sun in my eyes; I’m thinking of taking her bowl (Oh sure, let me bus it for you, lady) to the bus bins, but I never leave my laptop unattended, I never ask people to “Could you look after my stuff while I go to the bathroom” because at best it makes no sense (they can take your shit as well as any other stranger in the place) and at worst it’s discrimination (nine times out of ten you’re asking a white person, aren’t you, you racist moron, you) — and it was hard to maneuver into my spot with my backpack on around some rich-looking Australian-sounding stroller moms at the table in the corner, so I was feeling a bit trapped and claustrophobic.
No matter. It’s the one available table, the scene of 16th on the other side of the glass is ideal in that I’m here with the People and I’m watching the People smoke their cigarettes past the window and walk their corgies and pick up ACME bread at a store I lovingly refer to as The Expensive Store for 2 dollars more than it costs at Whole Foods or Bi-Rite, and I’m a writer, so I will pull out my notebook and I will write.
It’s a little hot in the sun, the Australian moms have started to sing OUT LOUD to a pop song that was playing on the radio (I shit you not), and the previous tenant’s kale grain bowl is moldering under my nose, but I’m a writer and I’m going to get down my 1000 handwritten words right the fuck now. Then I look over my shoulder, and there’s another table available behind me. I shoulder my backpack, maneuver around the moms, and take a seat in the shade.
And by the way, I’m a GREAT person, so I took that dumbass woman’s decaying grain bowl with me to the bus bin on the way. Shoulder pat.
The window is open. And in about sixty seconds I am freezing. A new customer who just ordered takes the seat I was at before. I settle in to write, and I put my leather jacket back on, wishing I had worn a sweater. It’s a hot sunny day, but only in San Francisco can the temperature be 65 and it’s hot in the sun and FREEZING when you’re next to an open window in a cafe.
I wrote. My grain bowl arrived. It like kinda worked out. I got a few pages down, I was working, that’s all that matters.
Did I do anything else on my mile’s long micro-goals daily to-do list? Uuuuuummmm … Well, writing is the only thing that matters. I, um, did go to Hot Yoga. So that’s two things. And the Imperfect Grain Bowl at Manny’s is probably anti-inflammatory (I’m trying to murder headaches with copious amounts of turmeric . . . just don’t ask.) So that’s three! Did I practice Japanese that day? Did I meditate? Did I walk 10,000 steps? No, but maybe tomorrow. The only point of this post is to say that I am a maniac, and I’m considering that maybe we are all maniacs. Maybe we need to quit that 10,000 steps per day goal. Maybe it’s insane to think that on top of rolling out of bed, doing our day’s work, occasionally exercising, occasionally going outside for a stroll, occasionally watching Anime and pretending we’re learning to understand the words (just me?), occasionally having sex and sometimes cleaning our apartments, that we should be able to walk 10,000 steps EVERY DAY. It’s possible that that goal is just nuts. It doesn’t sound nuts, but when you have fifteen other daily goals . . . it is nuts.
Just me?
Originally published at www.miamannsauthor.com on February 5, 2019.
