My Alphabet Atlas for the Year Ahead

a personal contract

This weekly newsletter is a free offering from my Substack, Dare to Be Dry. I recently switched my settings allowing an option for readers to purchase a subscription ($5.00/month or $50/for the year). I have mixed feelings about enabling this option, yet I know people/readers/the folks I am getting to know here on this great platform value writing and the work that goes behind producing these weekly newsletters. Regardless of whether you opt to purchase one, I am so very thankful that you are here right now, reading my thoughts/the things that spill out of me. In 2024 I am going to focus on additional content that will only be available to paid subscribers. I will always produce a Friday newsletter for free. This will not change. I don’t yet know what the paid tier will look like, but I hope you will consider coming along for the ride.

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Here we are - halfway through December (how did that happen!?!?!?) and I’m staring down the barrel at a new shiny year. You know what that means: the hum drum of resolutions, goals, New Year New Me, etc. It’s the time of year when the merry go round of self-improvement spins us all around faster than any other month until we get whiplash from self-inflicted disappointment in our ability to stay the course. Maybe I should just speak for myself - that’s been my experience. There has only been one January where a new goal served me well enough to be sustainable. And that was in 2021 when I decided to experiment with a Dry January challenge. I entered the year under the guise of a 30-day cleanse from alcohol, but my heart and mind knew it was more. It unfurled into an awakening I so desperately needed. Three years later, I am now looking at 2024 wanting (needing) a new kind of experiment. Neuroplasticity, the power behind rewiring neurons, fascinates me and I want to experiment more with mine. Stay with me here…..

Quitting alcohol has lit up my brain in so many other areas. Malleable and pliable, I rewired my stuff upstairs. I Marie Kondo’d my mind. Or so I thought. A lesson I keep having to relearn is this - my brain is so sneaky. A snake in the grass, my mind slithers right back into unhealthy habits. And it will attempt to convince me that the new ways are acceptable, healthy, and curated with the best of intentions. While I’ve been successful in removing my addiction to alcohol, my brain packed up its bag and traveled to other dopamine filled islands. It’s been a 3-year trip, island hopping between sugar and excessive carbs, social media noise, workaholism, and now, dare I say, I feel myself getting hooked here on Substack. My phone is in my hands more than I am comfortable with as this year draws to a close. I’m slipping right back into my own compulsive dopamine vortex. The one where I get sucked in and barely come up for air. I need to make some changes.

It hasn’t all been bad. Despite my transfer addictions, 2023 has been the year that my right side of my brain woke back up. There has been a symbiotic connection, a slow dance, where my overthinking left side decided to finally make room for the right. For the first time ever, it’s letting the right lead. Perhaps even accepting that the right has something it can teach it. And what’s funny about this whole process for me is that while distilling and shifting through my ideas of how to write about this here, I felt a pull to call it a contract (there goes my aggressively strong analytical left side!) A contract for my Self (capital S Self). My 2024 Self. The lawyer in me wants to legitimatize this and bind it into an Agreement. One party is my left brain and the opposing party my right. And the only terms I can come up with to have an equitable meeting of the minds is to turn my mind away from things. Stricken from the record, shave the distractions down. Once again, I sit across the table from dopamine and try to wrangle it into submission. Sign on the dotted line. Make this official.

I’m left thinking - what contracts do I make with myself already? I encourage you to ask the same. I guess we can all look at our “to do” lists this way. What remains at the top and what gets shuffled to the next day? Any patterns there? Perhaps there are terms that warrant revising or revisiting.

What deals with myself do I want to re-negotiate or amend?

I’ve decided I want to enter a contract with my true nature. A binding one yet one that has no statute of limitations. One that I can never breach. One where I am counsel to myself. My true Self.

I have dipped in and out of Jenny Odell’s book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. My mind keeps returning to this idea of an experiment in subtraction. Instead of adding more to our plates and more to our days, drop some things. Less doing out of duty. More doing out of desire. Like Thoreau, I want to “live deliberately” and “suck out all the marrow of life”. Lately, the state of my nervous system prevents me from this sort of deliberate existence. I need a new equation. I need to subtract.

I think what’s happening is I’m feeding myself a diet jam packed with other people’s voices, content and ideas. It lights me up, yes. But it’s time to shift to a diet that nourishes me with words that I have to say. What is original to me? It’s time I quote myself. Trust what’s there.

If you were a fly on the wall in my house, you would see that podcasts are continuously streaming in my ears. I have one ear bud in while I make beds, fold laundry, pack lunches. I putt around the house tackling all the chores with someone else’s voice in my ears. All the time. Every time.

I think I’m overstimulated. I think we all might be.   

I’ve noticed in doctors’ offices, grocery store lines and at traffic lights, eyes are glued to devices with the occasional glance up. I see how addicted to his phone my 16-year-old is and it genuinely breaks my heart. Because it’s not his fault. We did this to our kids. Collectively, we all dove headfirst into the digital divide. I want to cut the Wi-Fi chord, shake the endless streaming and find another way.

To get there I will begin with some accounting. Let’s call it an energy audit.  A new year will do this - a nudge to audit ourselves. I want to become more conscious of what energizes me and what depletes me. I don’t have the answers to this yet. I am putting it here for accountability. A commitment to collect my own data. I will look closer at all the debris that gets kicked up after a day of grinding it out. Historically, at the end of those days is when I numb out most. This is where I need to look closest.

If any of this is stirring something up and you feel pulled to this same sort of exercise, I ask you: what is taking you away from examining that? What is taking you away from what you want? This will be my leading question as I walk into 2024.  The first witness I will interrogate is myself. 

I want to make more energy deposits and less energy withdrawals. I don’t and won’t pretend to know how to accomplish this (yet) but here is where I will start. This is what I have so far:

I don’t want to be (have to be) accessible to everyone all the time. 

I want space yet I want to draw others closer. 

I will ask (perhaps daily): what’s getting the best of me and who’s getting the rest of me?

I will look to play as a form of deep attention.

I want to shake loose the pandemic of doing that continues to trip me up and yank me down.

Less doing out of duty. More doing out of desire.

Many people pick a word of the year. It’s a practice where you pick a word that means something to you - a way to inspire the year ahead with focus and purpose. With this in mind, I recently had an idea of listing out an alphabet of intention for 2024. 26 words that describe what I want to feel or do in the new year. I bounced this idea off my 10-year-old daughter. All I got back was a shrug of the shoulders and an eye roll (*sigh* *tween life*). I’m not going to let that deter me. I have my list here to share and will print it out and leave it for her to read. I think she may decide to join in.

Here are my 26 words - a guidepost for my year ahead.

• A allowance

• B breath

• C capacity

• D desire

• E expansion

• F flow

• G genuine

• H here

• I intentional

• J juxtaposition

• K keepsake

• L leisure

• M micro-magic

• N nourish

• O open

• P play

• Q quaint

• R ritual

• S stay

• T tender

• U upward

• V vast

• W want

• X xenial

• Y yearn

• Z zeal

As I walk into the next year, I will resist the expectation to grind it out. The expectations I put on myself. I am someone who takes my self-care very seriously. By self-care, I mean my non-negotiables. The things I know serve my recovery well. These are daily walks outside, yoga 2-3 times a week, writing/dumping out my mind onto paper. I’m not talking about bubble baths or pedicures here. But even with these routines in place, I am habitually abusing my attention. Because I’m not really there doing the thing. I’m doing the thing I tell myself makes me calmer and more regulated while stacking one habit on top of another, simultaneously. This is no longer serving me. Things that are worthwhile do not have to feel hard. This is the direction I want to move towards in 2024. Care to join me?

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