Discussion of our yearly theme for 2024, as well as why themes in general.
preamble
why not resolutions
A lot has been spoken of New Year's resolutions over the years. We were always in the camp that New Year's resolutions didn't work properly for us from the ones we've tried, so eventually we stopped setting them beyond the old "what's our New Year's resolution? It's 2560x1080! :V [1]" joke.
Resolutions have a tendency to be inflexible, and often concern things not completely within our spheres of influence. For example, "I want to lose X kg by the end of the year" is, on the surface, a good resolution. It meets all the criteria of being a "SMART target". But metabolisms are not within our direct control. At best, they can be nudged - but if the body converts X kg of fat directly into muscle, that is still a failure with the goal as stated. At worst, this kind of resolution could be actively harmful, encouraging behaviours that worsen overall health just trying to hit the number.
A few years ago, we started listening to Cortex, where the hosts are big proponents of setting yearly themes rather than resolutions, and that set us down that same path - setting a thing to focus on throughout the year; a guiding light when making decisions. While we have not progressed to their branded journal yet, it's a possibility for the future. (There's also a better explanation of themes on that page than we could really give)
past themes
2022 was the Year of Overcoming Anxiety; trying to be more engaged socially in a way we hadn't since the start of the pandemic. There were still some things we weren't willing to do with high risk elements, but having this as a focus helped us realize that yes, we can head into VR at 5am our time and no one will think any worse of us for it.
2023 was the Year of Creativity, encouraging putting efforts into creative endeavours. This worked more than we expected, just in different ways than we initially thought when planning.
this year's theme
We've been pretty open about the fact that 2023 hasn't been the best for us mental health wise; falling in to familiar patterns and struggles throughout it.
2024 has to be about addressing these things directly; acknowledging the spoons we have and not allowing the executive dysfunction to win as often.
As such, the theme for 2024 is named after the most resonant phrase we had to describe what we need to do.
For us, 2024 will be the Year of Generally Unfucking Shit.
some things we'd like to do
expression
Expression covers a lot of things.
We need to go through our wardrobe, get rid of everything that either no longer fits or no longer aligns with who we are, and significantly cut down on the number of plain practical t-shirts for walking the dog. We want to replace these with more things that talk about who we are.
We want to express our genders more, from finally putting flags on the wall to getting what's left of our hair dyed, as well as the nail polish if we can get past the sensory issues.
But it also means telling friends we love them, even if we have to keep adding "(platonically)" at the end.
(the right kind of) consumption
If left to our own devices, we have the tendency to consume the media equivalent of junk food - rewatch podcasts for things we've never watched and have no plans to, endless variations on beating Pokémon games with just a single monster.
We want to unsubscribe from channels and podcasts that do not nourish mind nor soul, or at least to only use them as background noise when doing something else.
COVID anxieties
Probably not this year, but we want to get out to a US con - most likely BLFC - to see friends.
But we haven't been to a con since November 2019. We haven't travelled outside the UK at all since February 2020. Various members of immediate family are high risk, so it's taken us a lot longer to re-emerge into the world, and we're going to need to ease ourselves back into that.
So, we're attending a convention this year rather than just Furality, will see how we do masking in fursuit there. Possibly, we'll travel within Europe, whether that's to see friends or simply to revisit Disneyland Paris after two decades.
clean-up
For being trapped in the same four walls for a while, we've not done the best job of maintaining that space. So part of this will be cleaning and tidying up - decluttering the desk, making notes on what's contained in miscellaneous boxes, deciding how much stuff we rarely reach for that we need to keep accessible.
footnotes
At some point we should maybe swap out the main ultrawide monitor we use for a newer model, but eh, it still works. ↩︎