Since the beginning of 2018, I’ve been writing a liberation list for the new year, instead of resolutions. Inspired by Cate Huston, it’s a list of things I want to free myself from in the upcoming year. These are things I’m going to leave behind in 2019, things that I’m absolutely over. At the end of each year, I do a little private review of how successful I was, and every year I’ve done a damn good job, considering I also don’t usually revisit the list throughout the year. Here’s the list for 2020:
I’m liberating myself from…
- Finding/telling narratives about other people’s behavior and thoughts without talking to them.
- The idea that I have to keep my body at factory settings.
- All the things I own that belonged to [deadname] that don’t belong to Fen.
- Fear of editing my work and asking for feedback.
- The hourly retail worker mindset of needing to be visibly productive every moment of the work day.
- Fear of getting caught by authority while doing something weird or abnormal.-
- Unethical companies that are really just a Rube Goldberg machine of human suffering.
- Being scared to just start things.