#15: Manifesting 2024
A year of stability awaits (I hope)
Issue 15 | 28 August, 2023 | 6 minutes reading time
Heyo, readers, and welcome to your October issue of Multitudes.
Here’s something you should know about me – I’m a sucker for a fresh start. I’m not alone in this; to be human is to be gooey-eyed at the possibilities of a clean slate. Past failures become the shortcomings of another person who’ll cease to exist once the clock strikes midnight.
Though it goes entirely against my cynical hipster aesthetic, I buy into the cliché of a New Year wholesale. With my birthday just four days later, I can’t help but believe that the universe wants me to have a hard reset at that time of year.
Manifesting a year
After a decade of failed attempts, I’ve stopped adding resolutions to my resets, though. By making hard and fast rules for an entire year while swept up in the optimism of 31st December, I was setting myself up for failure.
Those resolutions were based on the belief that the person with shortcomings would indeed cease to exist on the 1st of January; that the new me would exhibit a degree of motivation and consistency that I’d never shown so far, and that LinkedIn hustlebros could only dream of.
So go most resolutions. In the US, apparently, 80% fail by February and 92% by the year-end. I can’t imagine the numbers being different anywhere else in the world.
In recent years, instead of burdening myself with strict targets (except for a reading goal, which I track religiously on Goodreads), I think through a theme for the coming year. It’s halfway to manifestation; in deciding what kind of a year I want to have, I trigger the creation of a Jiminy Cricket-like voice that nudges my decisions. Each small choice made compounds over days, weeks, and months, hopefully giving me the year I wanted at the end.
Looking back on 2023
2023, for example, was spent in search of novelty. It followed a chaotic 2022 where, in the face of elevated anxiety, I sought the comfort of familiarity. All I wanted last year was to avoid disappointment, so I always chose a solid 7.5/10 over a 50/50 chance of a 9/10. I spent the year reading the same sorts of books, ate the same dosas, and drank the same cups of coffee.
At the end of it, I felt trapped by monotony because of my need for consistency.
So, as I’ve written before, this year became about all things new. Whether it meant adding a generous dose of fiction to my literary diet, pointing at strange pictures on menus in Singapore and eating whatever came my way, or overcoming commitment phobia to give a long-distance relationship a chance, I tried to choose the unfamiliar option.
Slowing down time
The upside of 2023’s escapades is that no two months have looked alike. In the last two years, actually, I’ve travelled about twenty times, switched jobs, seen both my brothers get married, and, as of last month, become an uncle. I’ve been out of Bangalore for 10 of the last 24 months, rendering my apartment little more than a glorified storage unit for long periods.
This treadmill of novelty was the antithesis of the two pandemic years before it. Each new experience became a marker of time etching new memories in my mind, helping differentiate days, weeks, and months. This was one way of slowing down time, especially after two years of lockdown that blended into a singular blur.
The exhaustion
Though novelty’s been rewarding, it’s come at the price of exhaustion and been the death knell for routines. My brain’s been perpetually switched on and stimulated with barely any downtime. I’ve never got into into a groove with work, exercise, cooking, and other everyday vanilla habits.
Life has been about perpetually packing and unpacking; of carefully planning grocery purchases for a couple of weeks at a time; of carrying my plants to my neighbours’ house so they stay alive while I’m gone.
All of which is to say – I need a break.
Shamefaced as I am to say it, I’ve become one of those adults who’s “too tired to travel.” I never believed them when I was a kid, but they might have been on to something.
The more I think about this, though, the more it makes sense. With few exceptions, most humans rarely ‘travelled’ throughout all of human history, and certainly none with our modern-day frequency. I’m speculating, but maybe we were only meant to be a species that migrated across continents over centuries, not hours?
Looking to 2024
Maybe these mental gymnastics are unnecessary. Maybe I don’t need an evolutionary reason to crave familiarity, routine, and stability (even if it seems like a betrayal of my past self). Because one way or another, that’s what I’m manifesting for 2024.
If all goes to plan (when does it ever), 2024 will be a year of paradoxes. I want to do less but achieve more. Less of my life will be worthy of my Instagram feed, but I’ll hopefully get to more important things I’ve been putting off.
First, I need to figure out my Master’s. Having abandoned my roots as the jhola-carrying, kurta-wearing, Kundera-reading poster child of the humanities, I’m ready to plunge into the murky world of MBA bros. There are exams to give, statements of purpose to write, and scholarships to hunt for. None of these are things I can do while constantly on the move.
I’ve also got a semi-functional back to attend to. Though I haven’t felt pain since being immobilised by a slipped disc last December, I still only have the core strength of a toddler. My spine isn't ready to handle the stress of running, something I sorely miss. I suppose it’s finally time to heed my doctor’s advice and get regular at the gym, another goal that requires routine.
Whether it’s for my education, health, or just about everything else, I yearn for depth next year. I want to achieve things that are the product of slow, regular repetition. I want to publish issues of Multitudes that are closer in substance and style to the writing I admire. There’s also the small matter of getting braces at 28 because I have a “traumatic bite” (and was obviously too cool for them at 16). If nothing else, frequent dentist visits will demand I stay in one place.
Chances are, next year won’t go exactly to plan. But that’s okay. I’m not giving myself hard and fast rules to obey, so there’s no grief to be had when things inevitably go awry. All I’d hope is that when given a choice next year, I choose simplicity. The option that’s less consuming and more calming. The one that skips the quick dopamine for long-term satisfaction. It may mean that more days blur together, but I’ll hopefully have more energy (and a decently strong core) when the year ends.
Anyhoo. That’s it for this month. In case you’re also getting a head start on 2024 planning, Godspeed.
I’ll be back in your inbox in a month, on the other side of my last bit of travel for the year.
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See you in a month,
Shantanu
Best wishes always :)