Proving Ground: Q1 Check-In on 2023 Goals
Vermillion trees. Long, low houses roofed in red. Blue-gray mountains with frosted peaks.
There’s still snow here, in south Bulgaria, even though Easter was last Sunday at home and this Sunday here.
Viki, our tour guide who chucks lukcheta — small honey- and mint-flavored candies named for the onions they look like — at us when we get a trivia question right, tells us about the differences between the Catholicism I know and the Orthodox Christianity I’m experiencing for the first time.
Here, she explains, the king is the supreme leader of the church. The six churches we go into reflect this: each has one dais built slightly higher, one throne slightly more gilded.
I like the immediate confirmation of that new fact. Lately life has felt like this — a series of abstract lessons taken in and then tested on the proving ground.
I’m writing this first-quarter update in my head, my hands spanning the worn leather of our rental car as we drive south, Bruce Springsteen on the aux.
I’m writing it from the line at border control, where a kind Bulgarian man lets us merge peacefully into the flow of people trying to drive into Greece immediately after an irate bottle-blonde woman refuses to and where we lower the volume on M.I.A.’s “Paper Places” as they check and stamp our passports. (Two Americans rolling through customs to the sound of gunshots, even recorded ones, doesn’t feel right, especially after the man’s largesse.)
I’m writing from a green-painted bench outside of the Archaeological Museum of Serres, next to two young boys who are kicking a soccer ball across the triangle tiles, aiming for the pale iron entrance but occasionally slamming the ball into the trunks of columns carved with angular Greek that flank the doors.
I’ve been writing this update in my head for days. From the mineral-water jacuzzi of our nice hotel and the dusty master bedroom of our Soviet Airbnb. From the womb-wamrth of the hammam, the marble floors heating the soles of my feet, and the quiet of Bulgaria’s national synagogue, bathed in blue light from the turquoise ceiling.
This is the first trip I’ve taken somewhere new in a long time, I think, witnessing the shapes of an unfamiliar language, cuisine, customs; my head feels full, packed with sensory experiences and the personal reflections they feed.
But that’s not true.
I went to Italy less than two months ago. I walked along canals and ate prosciutto and hopped on and off bright orange trams like it was my birthright. I listened to a different language I didn’t know, eked out earnest gratitude within it. I’m doing that again here. Blagodarya, grazie.
That is why I come to the page and write this every quarter. (Plus or minus two weeks; forgive my tardiness.)
That is why I’ve kept this habit of (semi)regular check-ins for a decade and a half.
It is easy — and wonderful — to be subsumed by the present. It is is special and joy-inducing to sit next to a yiayia in lilac socks and watch her watch the bird cooing in the tree beside us. But it is also special to sit next to myself, to the me that turned my values and curiosities and passions into a set of things to go after, and recognize how I’m doing against them. To remember what I’ve done and what it’s taught me. To use the lessons confirmed over the last three months to chart where I’m going next.
Let’s begin. As always, I’ll share my top-line goal and the specific goals beneath each, which I wrote in January, and then how I’m doing against them.
Cherish my existing community and invest in new ones; love well and be well loved.
1. Continue to find community in Valencia. Part of living in a country I’m not from means befriending other outsiders. Part of being an outsider is leaving. My Valencia social circle has changed more than I’d imagined it would when I started. (More than my Buenos Aires circle did in a year, for sure.) I accept that now. I want to hug my people close and stay open to meeting new ones. How? Throw and attend goodbye parties. Be generous with my friends and listen to my instincts when I find people I click with. Plan things. Attend things. Spend a night a week in community.
This is a win. I have two beautiful, enriching new friendships that have brought me much joy over the last quarter. I have come to more deeply love friends that I met here last year. I do new things, and I spend time alone, and I build communities of my own making, and I attend and appreciate communities built by others.
2. Stay close with my people. Bringing together some of my all-time favorites for my birthday last year was soul-changingly fulfilling. I want to keep that energy, even when international reencuentros aren’t in the cards. How? Invest time in regular catch-ups and phone calls and video chats. Travel to see Miss Brin. Travel with and to my sister. See my aunt and my grandma. Make it to at least one big friend wedding in the States. See The Light Brigade for our retreat. Visit Cam and Camilla in London. Visit Jigs in Milan. Visit New York babies.
Big, fat, juicy win. Marta and I went to Paris; The Light Brigade and I went to Norfolk; I went to London and saw Cam; I went to Milan and saw Jigs. I will go to New York and the States in general later this year. I have regular phone calls and text chains that make it feel like I get to witness and be witnessed by people who live thousands of miles away. I cannot do this with everyone, and sometimes I feel guilty about that. But friendships have seasons, and seasons include winters. They will grow in the ways that they need, and I will tend to them in the ways that I am able.
3. Be a good host. I loved having so many people come visit in 2022, and I want to keep the threshold propped open for the next 12 months to come. I want to be the host I felt lucky to find in my travels. I want to bring people who visit into this home that I love in this city that I love and wrap them up in care. And for people who share my city, I want them to come for breakfasts and baking dates and feel at home in my space. How? Keep my house and take care of it. Invest in things that matter to me: art, a stocked pantry, a Rolodex of all breakfast deals within a 20-minute walk. Welcome the people I know are coming and those who will.
Big ol’ win. This quarter we had Marta, Cam, Michael, Laura, Alex, and Esme. Ally, too! And the calendar is booking up for the rest of the year. I love my house. I love my people. I love that they can overlap.
4. Build a stronger literary community. My writers’ group gives me support and accountability and no shortage of book recommendations. And I have book clubs in English and in Spanish I love. I want to keep those communities up and running, but I want to expand into a broader literary community, too. How? I want to start working with some kind of publishing enterprise again — being a reader for a journal, or planning a festival, or participating in some kind of English-language project here in Spain.
Eh. This is a fail so far. I haven’t prioritized it. I did just sign up for a summer-long creative workshop that will introduce me a new writing community, which I’m excited about. And I will apply to be a reader for a journal at some point this summer. I hope to be checking in a few months with more progress here.
5. Be in love. I debated if this belonged on this list at all, and if it did, if it belonged here. But I believe in wanting things — in articulating needs and desires, in tacking a route towards them. I have never not been grateful for love, even if the me of five months ago would’ve struck a big red line through that sentence. “I live my life in widening circles /that reach out across the world. /I may not complete this last one /but I will give myself to it.” (Rilke.) How? Be open. Be communicative. Be experimental.
Mmmm. This is a maybe. Not as a maybe I’m in love — I’m definitely not, not in the way I meant when I wrote this goal (I am deeply in love with life, and my friends, but this is not a Dolly Alderton TV adaptation; I think those things are gorgeous and vital and probably actually better to build an existence around than romantic love, which is only 1/20th of my focus for this or any other year in my life, but still! It’s that 20th’s time to shine.) — but I can feel the channels of me preparing to be able to be. I’m remembering what openness and experimentation feel like; what I like and what I don’t; what I don’t know and what trusting myself to figure it out looks like. I’m feeling blips of attraction and infatuation and intrigue, of hurt and anxiousness and curiosity. I’m feeling and making sense and signing up to feel more. And it feels good.
Make things.
6. Write regularly. I’ve tried for years to be prescriptive about how my writing should happen: morning pages, daily half-hours, long Sunday afternoons. I’m not saying any of that in 2023. How, then? Write six short stories and six essays I’m proud of. Length to be determined; subject matter, too. But I will write and I will finish things.
This is a win. To write 12 things this year means to write three per quarter. This quarter, thanks entirely to the Light Brigade’s retreat, I wrote three short stories I love. They total 10,000 words. And vitally, they are finished. I also wrote the sixth and final Ow But Wow essay and have started several other nonfiction essays.
7. Craft regularly. Craft is making. It is tactile and explorative and fun — and all of those things more than art is. I want to practice crafts I know I enjoy, like ceramics and cooking, and also try a few new ones. How? Keep up with once-weekly ceramics class and make and gift many beautiful, satisfyingly-hewn things. Take Sunday art classes whenever I can. Try a new craft (jewelry making, sewing, cooking class) at least twice.
Enormous win. Ceramics brings me so much joy. I’m so glad to have started it and stuck with it. I’ve made new dishes — a red curry just entered the chat — and remade old favorites. I haven’t started new classes, but there’s time for that.
8. Host events. I debated whether this went in community or making or business (should I make money from these one day??), but it feels like it belongs thoroughly here. What I like most about having events is the full sensory leap of them: the theme, the decor, the food, the atmosphere, ready to be drawn up and played out. The making, and then the experiencing of what was made. How? I’d like to host something once a month: a dinner party; a games night; a party-party.
Very much a win for Q1. We had game nights in English and in Spanish; an all-black Amy Winehouse tribute dinner party; a Valentine’s party. I don’t have anything immediately on the agenda for this next quarter, but I’m excited to have a house full of people again soon.
Take care of my body and brain; live in the present with them whenever possible.
9. Move my body regularly. How? Work out at least thrice a week. Walk as much as I can. Hit my favorite life metric: 10,000 steps.
A win. Volleyball + gym + living in a very walkable city = not hard to accomplish this, which is why we live here in the first place.
10. Appreciate and care for my brain. How? Keep going to therapy. Use what I learn there. Go to psychiatry for as long as I need to. Spend time alone when needed, and with people when needed.
This is a maybe. Therapy, good; psychiatry, I have fully bailed on in a way that I regularly feel terrible about. I like feeling good enough to not feel like I need to go, but also, I should definitely go. If I haven’t gone back by this time next quarter please stage a casual intervention.
11. Be outside — especially in water — whenever possible. Not going to recommit to my first-year-in-Valencia goal of getting in the ocean every month, though if it happens I’ll be happy. And as we learned in Bariloche, I like hiking fine, but it’s not a passion. I just want to be in and around nature: parks, beaches, water, gardens. How? Spend some part of most days outside.
Win. Park lays, ocean floats, garden wanders, lots and lots of time on sandy volleyball courts: outside is everything.
Create future optionality.
12. Make enough money and save some of it. This is the first year in four years I don’t want to double my income. For one, I need less to live well in Spain than I did in New York, and for two, I’m taking Laura’s advice about ignoring the siren’s call of the hedonistic treadmill (the ingrained sense of “more is better”). In fact, I would like to halve how much I make. How? I’d like my business to gross $110,000 this year, and to save half of my profits, including in retirement accounts.
This is a fail. I am not on track to meet either fork of the goal — the grossing or the saving. I am less worried about that than I think a past version of me would’ve been. But I still hope to be updating this in Q2 with slightly more money in the bank.
13. Formalize my forays into writing. How? I want to publish three essays and three short stories in external outlets.
Probably the win I’m most proud of (and probably directly correlated with why I’m not making as much money this year — she’s not a starving artist but she isn’t a bourgeois one either!). I had one essay come out with a literary magazine this quarter, and one of my new short stories is slated for publication with another in July. I need to keep writing, keep submitting, keep going. But those two wins feel real, and mean that I’m already a third of the way through this goal!
14. Finish a longer-term project. This is a goal from last year that I’m hoping my upcoming writers’ retreat lets me make real headway on. How? Finish a script or a book proposal or a story collection.
I think I will class this as a maybe, because I actually think I do-slash-will have enough material for a story collection. Whether it will be publishable is another question that you’ll see I quite cleverly did not include in the language of this goal.
15. Renew my Spanish visa. I want to be able to keep living here legally. How? Successfully navigate this process in March.
I’m going to make this a maybe. I did get approval, but I haven’t successfully navigated all of the hoops towards getting an actual new residence permit in my actual hands. I hope to have this done by the end of Q2.
Learn.
16. Do harder things in my business. How? Take on a few bigger-picture, white-space consulting projects, even if that means cutting some content or copy projects.
This is a win. I took a new role with a new client in a new industry and I’m learning constantly. It’s gratifying to see how these goals nest into each other — I am making less money, but I am learning more new things that are bringing me fulfillment now and could bring me more money in the future.
17. Get better at Spanish. How? At some point in 2023, take a class and pass a C2 exam. Get certified by the government as being proficient. (On a daily level, keep Spanish friends and read Spanish books, of course.)
Meh. A maybe. I haven’t prioritized the class, though I can and am dating, making friendships, taking ceramics, taking volleyball, reading, and fighting with people in Spanish.
18. Stick with volleyball. How? Stay in class twice a week. Do at least four tournaments. Make the podium in one of them.
Yes! Back in class after a bunch of travel last month. Did one tournament this quarter and did not make the podium but did have an extremely good time. So a maybe because of that last thing.
Consume beautiful things.
19. Read and love books. My relationship with books is maybe the best thing I’ve ever had in my life. How? A favorite annual goal, I will read four books each month, at least one of which isn’t fiction. I’ll keep a log of what I read and share my favorites.
A win. I’m somewhere around five books/month and reading plenty of short stories and memoirs that round out our numbers. The retreat was especially great for this. And now that we’re back to lay-in-the-park-and-read-for-hours season, I have a whole stack I’m thrilled to get through — and, again, in a way that makes this goal dovetail with my goal about building a life here in Valencia, I also have not one but two favorite bookstores here, and a growing collection of physical books to boot.
20. Eat and love food. I could fulfill this with a long Michelin-sponsored road trip or with a copy of Deb Perelman cookbook (hi loved ones, feel free to give me this) or with the continuation of my now-permanent Spanish breakfast habit (thank you Em and Carol!!). The how doesn’t matter here. I will do it most days and in many ways.
First of all, there are people we are in love with and then there is Cam Minden, for whom I feel such transcendent adoration that love falls short in describing it. She came to visit and, having read my initial goals post, brought a copy of Deb’s cookbook as a gift. (I of course cooked three dishes from it for a dinner party the week after.) Second, this would’ve been a full win even if I haven’t traveled so much this quarter — because paella and bocadillos and pan con tomate are all perfect foods and I will be happy to lead you to the light on that if you’re not yet there; book a visit — but I did travel, to France (Cheese! Butter! Bread! Road chicken! Lemon tarts! Beef stew! Steak! I could go on!) and to Italy (Prosciutto! Pizza! Pasta! Gelato! “Why in god’s name did I move to Spain and not this other, better southern European country?” being a real question I asked myself after a third perfect dinner in a row!), which supercharged this win into perhaps the winningest win of all time.
And so the half-hour-at-a-time philosophy continues
Nicky and I were sitting, hunched with hunger, on long wooden benches when we took out the small, cotton-stuffed charms we’d bought at the sixth and final church of the day. One featured Mary and a baby Jesus, and the other a fully-grown Jesus. The backs of each were embroidered with a blessing we couldn’t make out.
I held one in the cross-hatched palm of my hand and scanned it through Google Translate. “Slow down,” the app admonished.
It was a reminder I often needed. A lesson I could immediately apply.
I tried again, holding the squishy burgundy bundle between my thumb and forefinger, running the camera over it slowly.
Again, Google Translate returned nothing.
We flagged down our water, a smiley Bulgarian man pleased by our passion for his country’s garlic. (We’d asked for the traditional vinegar and garlic sauce, and not having any available, he brought us four cloves of raw garlic, which we sliced and ate until tears streamed down our cheeks, which made him proud.)
“Can you tell us what this means?” we asked, passing over our talismans.
He squinted at the charms. “Ah, I can’t help you,” he said. “That’s Greek to me.”
We laughed, apologized for mixing up our blocky alphabets, and lightly cursed the St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral for selling us mementos from a different country. Greece was, however, the country we were going to next, so we slipped them into a paper bag, where they stayed safe in our rental car as we drove to to a spa in the mountains, sweat out our body weight in various wood-paneled rooms, and passed into Greece with “Paper Planes” on mute.
Four days later, I messaged a tall, sweet man in Thessaloniki and asked him to tell me what the charms actually said.
“The white one says, ‘Keep me safe under your thoughts,’” he wrote. “And the yellow one translates as, ‘Dear Jesus, Son of God, bless us all.”
Keep us safe. Bless us. Good messages to say and share and carry in our pockets even when we don’t understand them. Perhaps especially then.
I kept the charms close as we traveled onwards — back over the border, back through the mountains, back to Valencia. Back home, where I set them on my bookshelf and went to count my blessings.