Conceptualizing the life of my desires
Watch the video version of this article.
I usually am all about the new year reset, the new year new me; I love the vision boards and enjoy reanalyzing my goals and accessing the changes I need to improve. I love that shit; inject my veins. New year's new me is usually my thing; something felt incredibly different for me this year. I wasn't feeling it, and Im going to go into why with today's video.
Before I get into why I was very anti-reset 2023 year, and why the new year new me cheer wasn't in the air for me this year, I'll first explain why this particular strike of midnight was so romanticized in my life. I started doing New Year's rituals ten years ago, and I'd write in my journal, read a surah of the Quran, and do other things to commemorate this transition. As years went by, I started writing goals, and intentions, having a word to be my mantra for the year, and somewhere along the way, I started making vision boards. I can't remember how or why I began adding things to my ritual, but it naturally happened and was deeply personal and affirming. I noticed how it set toned my outlook, helped me be optimistic, and gave me confidence and considerable faith in my outcome for the year.
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I started sharing these things with friends and family and hosting free vision boards and affirmation workshops. It felt great seeing people enjoy my process of vision boarding and making it a community-building experience. We weren't just aimlessly cutting magazines and throwing them on poster board,
I enjoyed vision boards becoming more well-known and people not looking at me strangely when I mentioned them. I loved being a part of Black women and femmes' process of visually doing things to actualize the world they wanted to live in. Im a firm believer that imagination, faith, and the belief in something far beyond what you can see keeps the idea of liberation, especially for Black people, a living, breathing thing. You have to believe that there is life outside of white supremacy patriarchal capitalism, something none of us have ever seen, yet, most of us believe in and want it. This thing none of us have ever experienced but still want and need it. It's been one of my radical self-care rituals, the thing I used to recharge this idea of hope. So when im home after being reminded of my many intersections of marginalization, I have these affirmations, these goals, these visions, and the audacity to conceptualize my desires; I love sharing that with other Black women and femmes.
Then a global pandemic happened, and something shifted for me in this process. I think what's happening for me is I started just doing these things throughout the year: constant affirmation, setting monthly intentions, reading my Quran more, and doing seasonal resets, which include deep cleaning and decluttering my apartment. I use anytime time of the year to do an inventory of my life, to see what is working for me and what isn't. Some routines, coping mechanisms, and ideas could be outgrown, and like the extreme purger I am, I get rid of them. So internally, a 2023 reset was less necessary for me. I began to do these things throughout the year, these rituals of resetting. I conceptualize my desires daily, not something just heavily dependent on to bring in January 1, and cause of this, when we reached the end of 2022, I didn't need this moment to restart.
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I asked myself a few questions while writing this. What exactly are we resting for? This world is shitty; honestly, why are Black women and femmes resetting? Are we resetting to recharge? Are we resetting so w can pour into ourselves and our needs, or have we (also me) fallen into the trap? Do we still need to be better and prove we are worthy and valuable, even with all our work towards self-development, education, therapy, fitness, spirituality, religion, and what we provide for the community? Why are we always trying to be better? For whom and for what exactly??
I thought about this heavily, seeing my social media count down to the new year. I wanted to reframe my thinking, and I challenged everyone reading this to reframe their thinking about resets for the New Year. Who you are right now is enough! Chill out and stop picking yourself apart. You have done so much; you still thrive during a global pandemic! Do you need to improve? No, you're the standard everyone aspires to; you're a Black woman, a Black femme; you got this. You don't need to do a complete 180 to be proud of who you are. You don't need a rebrand, boo.
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