im mixing metaphors and having a good time
this guy thinks he's a self help novel or something. happy 2023
When we were little, my sister always made a long list of new years resolutions. She would write them out on a big piece of paper, color cool images all over the page, and hang it up in her room. I never participated; i wasn’t the type to give myself homework if i could avoid it.
Two years back, i decided to attempt some new year’s resolutions. well, i didn’t just want to “attempt” them, i wanted to do them the right way, the way other people didn’t understand, the way that really gets you to commit to them, and saves you from the cliche: falling short of making desirable changes to your life.
I thought because i hadn’t made new years resolutions before, i hadn’t failed at new years resolutions either. i felt that watching other people fail had taught me how to succeed. I would avoid the cliches, focus on just a few actionable items, and do the fuck out of them. There was a key to accomplishing a new years resolution, a trick that others didn’t understand. My achilles heel has always been the belief that i can skip steps.
to the new years resolutions skeptics, i see you, though even when i wasn’t practicing, i didn’t care enough to be a skeptic. my argument against your stance is that yes, january first may be an arbitrary turn of the calendar, but not attaching meaning to silly things doesn’t make you evolved, and there’s no medal handed to you at the end of your lifetime for being the best iconoclast. that’s something i routinely need to remind myself of, anyway. stubbornly refusing to ascribe meaning to mainstream events, for me, has only ever removed the scaffolding that could help my mind stay afloat. caring about things, even just as a game, is important.
Two years ago, i settled on two resolutions: one, i was going to FINISH and RELEASE at least one musical project. two, i would COMMIT to a regular exercise routine. no cliches for this guy!!!! Two years later, I have done neither of these things, and I’m proud of that.
To be fair to myself, i do work on music more than i did two years ago, and i exercise more as well. When i came up with the resolutions, i thought of them as notches on an egg timer, ticking towards me: by the end of the year, i will finish my pilot. around my birthday, i’ll start shooting my web series. but no punishment if i dont. the timer never really goes off. i give it a go, but i miss the deadlines. i’m not really one to give myself homework. even so, somehow, quite a while later, when the timer is dusty and forgotten, and i casually work at my desk, i do find that i am 50% ahead of where I was when I made the goal, even if i’m 50% behind where i’d originally hoped to be. lately i think of my resolutions less like an egg timer, more like a setting on a stove. On january first, i turn the heat from low to medium. The next year, from medium to high. Eventually i will bubble. I’ll try not to burn. how many years that takes is up to god and thermodynamics.
This is a list of 10 new year’s resolutions that im planning to fail at:
Getting very jacked and really huge
This is the obvious one. I will become very large and then i will be happy
Will learn to cook french food in the instant pot
I have learned a lot of indian food, but i would like to be very classy and wealthy, so i should probably learn french food, a classic wealth indicator. i would also like to use my instant pot more tho, since i have an instant pot, so imma look up a recipe for frog legs on the porridge setting
I will write 4 screenplays
If every day of the new year i write one page, then by the end of the year i will have 365 pages of a screenplay, which is enough for four 90 minute movies, which is a perfect franchise. Insane that nobody else has figured this out.
I will become a successful recording artist
If i make one song and then post it on tiktok every single day for a year, people will probably notice that i’ve become a shell of a human being and will want to take my personal livelihood into their own hands. This is true for any interest. If you want to be a professional soccer player, juggle a ball every day on tiktok and you will play on a major league team. I have gary vee trapped in my closet and this is what he screams when i offer him droplets of water to moisten his tongue
I will learn spells and wizardry
a lot of white ladies are doing magic on the internet, but be real, there is no magic in america that is accessible to white millennials that i shouldn’t be able to handle too. I, as an indian person who went to theatre school, should be able to do magic if they can do magic.
I will become a friend to all races
this one is too hard to explain and the newsletter is already late
I will conceive a nepotism baby (conceptually)
What i’m learning after having gone to college and being out in the world is that it’s actually pretty hard to build wealth or status in one generation. if you do it, it’s hard to still be able to say on your death bed that you saw a nice amount of sunsets. More than i really want to be successful, i want to see a lot of sunsets. This is why i’ve decided to have a nepotism baby. i will get as far as i can in my own career without the connections accrued by generations spent in an industry, and then i will train my child like a circus monkey to follow in my footsteps. This baby will be conceived conceptually, not tangibly, this year: all the arrangements and life schematics will be drawn up so that they have a blueprint to refer to once they are old enough to refer to blueprints, and thus will not need to waste energy dreaming.
I will do a get out-esque operation with florence pugh
i’m anticipating getting a little competitive with my child about their level of career success. Imagine if ur kid was better than you at stuff- it would be kind of beautiful, But annoying, no? Thus, i would like to do what they did in get out and put the muscles in florence’s face that let her act good, in my face instead. Then not only will i be more talented than my kid, but our faces won’t be similar anymore so people probably won’t notice the nepotism as much.
I will become an ethical landlord
If i had no brain no skills and no passion, this would be lit. when my child is doing everything interesting and i can’t get any acting work because i’m the guy that put florence pugh’s muscles in his face, it might be my only option. now how do i buy a building. depop?
I will conquer anxiety
one year ago, my resolution was to meditate and journal and stuff like that, and while i didn’t do it 365 days out of the year, i did it enough to start believing in progress again. I wrote something in a notebook the other day about some more stuff i could try:
not anticipating what people are saying, or speculating about what they are thinking while they speak to me.
not thinking about the final product of anything while i am in process.
not trying to solve problems that are yet to present themselves.
I don’t think there are any great metrics for evaluating these, so it doesn’t feel like homework. I don’t picture an egg timer. I think i can turn the heat on next year.