2024 Priorities

Forget Resolutions—What's Really Important to You?

Happy Friday, friends! This is your weekly reminder to set your timer for 25 minutes and get to work on a creative project (after you finish reading this newsletter). You’ll feel better, I promise.

And before I forget, Happy New Year!

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Hello there! It’s been a few weeks. That’s the problem with taking breaks—sometimes, getting back on the horse is hard. I struggled with that regarding this newsletter (for reasons I’ll get to in a bit).

But here I am, back in the saddle. It’s 2024, can you believe it? The number sounds like we’re living in the future, yet it’s here, right now. The quick passage of time never ceases to blow my mind.

Many of us might be making resolutions right about now. Like content and advertising focused on diets, gyms, and weight loss solutions, you’re probably seeing a lot of articles and/or ads about making the most of the fresh start the New Year brings. I hate to be one of them, but…

I like to think of the changes we’re all tempted to make during this time of year as priorities rather than resolutions. It’s all the same general idea, though, so I know I’m not fooling anyone. But calling them priorities implies a behavioral hierarchy and I like that.

My number one priority this year is my physical health. It takes the top spot for obvious reasons—I had a stroke in September that forced me to take a hard look at my habits. Folks, many of them are not that great. A couple of them are downright dangerous if you consider my medical history.

I’m not going to look up the number one resolution people make each year, but I’d be surprised if it weren’t something surrounding health. Weight loss, to be specific. I’ve resolved to be healthier (i.e. lose weight) for years, and you see how well that’s worked out. Spoiler alert: it hasn’t.

So what does prioritizing my health mean for me? Funny enough, weight loss isn’t something I’m thinking about at all. That doesn’t mean I don’t need to lose weight because I likely do, from a purely health perspective. Sure, there are healthy fat people out there, but unfortunately, I’m not one of them.

In the past, my efforts to lose weight had much more to do with my appearance and physical comfort than with what was happening inside my body. I now realize that weight loss for weight loss’s sake means nothing if the markers for disease risk aren’t lowered as a result of those efforts.

This year, my efforts will be focused on reducing my risk of heart disease, stroke, and other illnesses. I’ll consider myself successful if my numbers improve. Diet and reducing alcohol consumption (my biggest challenge) will be cornerstones of those efforts, but being proactive with healthcare, doing my own research, and keeping myself informed on what’s going on with myself will also be important. If any of this leads to weight loss, great. That will be the icing on the cake (that I’ll be eating less of in 2024).

It’s not sexy, but it’s time for me to get serious. But I feel empowered, and that, folks, is super-sexy.

My second priority is organization, primarily in my home. Among other things, I have numerous boxes that I haven’t opened since I packed them for our move to this house in 2020 taking up space in my closets. If all the clutter was in those boxes where I didn’t have to see it, maybe I could deal, but the thing about storing unpacked boxes in your closets is that there’s not enough room for the things you actually use. And those things are scattered in plain sight, all over my house, with no place to live.

Priority number three is my Work in Progress. Like weight loss, “finish writing this novel” appears on my New Year’s resolution list every year. I have not, in fact, finished this novel during the more than ten years I’ve been writing it. I don’t even like to talk about it anymore. But having recently surpassed one hundred pages on my current revision, I feel really good about where I’m at. I don’t have much to say about that except that I love this book so much—that’s new for me. I still struggle with getting the writing done but it helps to feel a sense of purpose, like this book deserves to be out in the world one way or another.

You might notice I’ve left mental health off my priority list. For good reason—it’s so 2023. Just kidding. At this point, working on my mental health is like getting dressed in the morning, or brushing my teeth. I just do it.

The thing about these priorities is they’re all linked. Maybe not directly, but success in one area has the potential to promote success in the others. That’s what I’m hoping for, anyway. We’ll have to see how it goes.

We’ve reached the part where I have to discuss things I prefer not to discuss. Remember when I wrote this post about Nazis on Substack (a whole lot of other writers did, too)? Well, Substack responded and it turns out they’re okay, not only with platforming Nazis and other extremist writers, but profiting from their content as well.

Before you nod your head and say, well, of course, censorship is bad even when you don’t agree with what’s being said; Substack does censor sex workers and pornography. Censorship and freedom of speech aren’t the issue here, friends.

Others have spoken so much more eloquently on this subject: Substack, Nazis, and the National Lampoon by Michael Gerber, Questions for Substack by A.R. Moxon, and We Got Substack to Admit its Nazi Problem by Marisa Kabas, are just a few.

Jumping platforms isn’t the easiest choice for many Substack writers. Many of them make a big chunk of their living here, particularly female journalists, who contribute important content here. I don’t pay for most of my subscriptions, but those I do are valuable to me. I’ll keep reading them for now, even if they stay on Substack.

I don’t make any money from Substack, so my decision is easier. I spent my time off figuring out what I wanted to do. I know I can’t stay here, but like many others, I’m not sure where to go. Back to Mail Chimp? Try out Patreon? Ghost? Button Down? Quit the newsletter biz altogether? I have yet to determine this. I’ll likely publish at least one more newsletter here on Substack, and my hope is that whatever platform I do choose is as seamless for my readers as possible.

Whatever happens, I thank you for subscribing and reading Twists & Turns.

Holly xx