Friday Joy: Don't Call It a Resolution
More of a realignment. Also: perimenopause hell, delicious soggy kale, and the best winter socks.
I know I'm in a media bubble because all of the January content I have been reading is strongly anti New Year's resolutions, when I'm fairly certain the world outside my bubble hasn't changed. The diet and exercise content of standard January media is reliably terrible. The idea that you need to throw your old self in the trash and start fresh with a "new you" is, in itself, trash.
And yet.
I love the energy and intention of January, the collective reflection on habits, and taking a moment to think about what small changes might make a meaningful difference in the quality of our lives. That it happens in January is arbitrary, but I'm personally energized by getting over the hump of the holidays and cracking open a new calendar, literally and figuratively. January is Big Enneagram Type 1 Energy1 for sure.
(Of course, this type of thing doesn't feel good for everyone, and chasing an unrealistic ideal, especially when it is wrapped up with diet culture and fatphobia, can lead people into dark places. There are also times in our lives when the goal is just survival, by any means necessary, when comfort and safety are all we should be focused on. So please know I want you to do what feels good for you, whatever that may be, and that this is just a meditation on what feels good for me personally.)
This year in particular has me thinking about small habits that over time become ingrained into grooves that are harder to smooth over as we age. I don't know exactly why this year of my life, not momentous, not even divisible by five, has me thinking more about aging, but it has. Some threshold has been crossed, and I see so clearly how I don't have an infinite number of do-overs, the way it seemed like I did in my 20s and even into my 30s. But I also see that I always have the opportunity to grow, to learn new things, to be curious and humble, and to gently realign my life with my values if I've found it's gone astray.
The habit that had been waiting in the wings for the last few months, peeking out every once in a while to see if I was ready, was waking up early enough to have a solid hour alone before the rest of my family woke up. I've always been a morning person, and love the quiet focus of brewing coffee before the sun comes up, the slow unfurling of my mind and body, the clarity that comes before other people's needs and priorities and tiny demanding voices cloud things up. I wrote my grad school thesis almost entirely in sessions between the hours of 5:00 to 6:30 AM. It's a good time for me.
But I am married to a night owl, and the pull to stay up late is real. One of my children is too young to get himself out of bed and fed in the morning, so I knew an early wake up would have to be truly early, but I wasn't ready yet. I had fallen into habits that made it hard for me to get out of bed early: drinking caffeine too late in the day, drinking a little too much wine in the evening, and becoming too dependent on weed gummies to help me fall asleep, which made it difficult to rise pre-dawn. Those habits had started when I was at my bad-fit job and just wanted to obliterate my sad brain at the end of the day. I no longer want to do that, thankfully, but the habits lingered.
At the end of the year, thinking about if there was anything in my life I wanted to adjust, out peeked that early wake up, waving at me. Is it time? it said. Yes, I said.
It's been less than a week. Far too early to call it a habit, but more than a one-day fluke. So far it feels great, actually, both the early morning quiet time alone and the break up with the bedtime habits that weren't working for me anymore. My eight-year-old inadvertently helped by being a surly, emotional wreck on Tuesday morning, a cloud of dark energy2 that put everyone else on edge, and I was grateful that my day hadn't started under that cloud, that I had been able to ease in on my own terms.
That's become my motivation out of bed every morning: the promise of starting the day with quiet and clarity and absolutely no else around. I'll take it, for as long as it feels right for me.
How's your relationship with Januarys? Are you making any realignments this year?
What I'm Into This Week
Reading
What Fresh Hell Is This?: Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, and You by Heather Corinna. Finally, the inclusive, queer, feminist perimenopause book the world desperately needed! You didn't know we needed it? Neither did I, until this past summer, when I fell off a perimenopause cliff into a world of strange symptoms that they never talked about on Golden Girls, a realization I actually knew almost nothing about what to expect about this next phase of life, and perimenopause and menopause books with inoffensive covers in pink and lilac—no thank you. The title and cover of this book are perfect, Corinna's writing is so funny and zingy, and I love their embrace of postmenopausal life as being punk as fuck rather than a sad fading into infertility and uselessness, which is the historical Western portrayal—created and reinforced by white male doctors—of this very normal time of life. I'd recommend reading it before you fall off a cliff into the unknown, but honestly I think it would be an interesting read at any point, by anyone.
Cooking
Boiled Kale from Orangette. I know this sounds like something served in a health sanitarium circa 1903, but actually it's from Zuni Cafe circa 2008, and doesn't that also make sense? It's the most soothing, silky pot of greens, cooked into submission but full of flavor and still vibrantly green. I brought it to a friend's house on New Year's Eve, to accompany her outstanding Jamaican braised oxtail and butter beans with coconut rice. It was definitely not the star of the show (that oxtail!), but a reliable supporting player, and if I had leftovers, I would eat them on toast with an egg, as Molly Wizenberg did in 2008, or topped with a scoop of white beans and a bunch of grated Pecorino cheese and black pepper, the way they served boiled kale at my favorite New Orleans pizza spot years ago. It's winter eating at its best.
Living In
Bombas Merino Wool Knee High Socks. Yes, Bombas socks are expensive, but because they last so long, the cost-per-wear over their life is actually quite reasonable. Also, socks that don't inch down into my boots over the course of the day are priceless. Okay, I'll stop justifying my love of $30 socks now. I bought a set of their merino wool calf socks a few years ago, and have been living in them during these Colorado winters, so I decided to try the wool knee socks AND I LOVE THEM. They are like a hug for my legs on chilly winter days, and now I can wear my sort of odd cold-weather cropped pants without the risk of exposing my bare skin to the elements.
Thinking About
Their Mothers Were Teenagers. They Didn’t Want That for Themselves. A bit of good news: Teen births have declined dramatically in the last few decades, as has child poverty. This article explores these trends through the lives of two women who were raised by teen mothers, and as a result both consciously avoided getting pregnant in their teens. No one is quite sure if falling child poverty is helping teens avoid having children, or if having fewer teen parents is reducing the number of children living in poverty, but as a person who has experienced being a student and employee both with a young child and without, I'm inclined to agree with this expert:
“I strongly disagree with the argument that teen births have no effect on social mobility,” said Isabel V. Sawhill of the Brookings Institution. “It’s a lot easier to move out of poverty if you’re not responsible for a child in your teenage years.”
ICYMI
5280, the website for Denver's local magazine, ran a profile of me this week. Check it out! Meet Anjali Prasertong, Denver’s ‘Antiracist Dietitian’.
This post includes affiliate links to Bookshop. If you buy a book, I receive a small percentage of the sale at no cost to you. Thanks for supporting my work!
I feel like there is a lot of Enneagram talk in the ether lately. I can’t tell if it’s truly a trend or if I’m just paying attention to it, like when you learn a new word and start hearing it everywhere.
Have you read The Bad Mood and the Stick by Lemony Snicket? It describes the infectiousness of grumpy energy perfectly.
I wrote about this on my own Substack, but I think I've sorted out for myself that I don't like resolutions because they seem rooted in the idea of changing yourself into a better version of yourself, which feels a little too shame adjacent to me. I do really like to set goals and that feels different to me because goals (in my mind) are about discovering what *this* version of myself can accomplish. I'm not trying to *be* a different person, I'm just figuring out how to make more space to do cool stuff I want to do, if that makes sense.
I am usually a night owl and my partner goes to bed early to get up for work so I definitely understand that dynamic. I have been hoping to get into a habit of writing for myself at least 30 minutes per day but with writing as my main job, it feels so much harder to do it for my personal projects. Using your post to affirm this intention and goal!