Against Optimization

A very un-January post about getting started, any way we can

Happy New Year!

A new year always feels a bit sparkly and festive, even if it also signals that it’s time to take down the Christmas decorations. Chris and I recovered from whatever bug we contracted during our holiday socializing; unpacked all our bags; got the house back to normal; caught up on laundry; and settled in to face the dead of winter.

Farmhouse entrance in the snow

Then, last night, a snowstorm burst through the bleakness. I woke to a world wrapped in a snowy blanket. A crunchy veneer of ice keeps everything clamped down tight to the earth, and our little valley town looks blindingly crisp and tidy through the windows. Nosie-dog and I venture out on a walk, but don’t get very far. There’s a lot of hopping over piles made by the ploughs, and Nosie has to punch each paw through fresh, untouched sidewalks. Back in the house, the wood stove insert helps the oil radiators warm us. I spend a moment in deep gratitude that our farmhouse has both wavy original glass and modern storm windows to keep out the drafts. Then, Nosie and I sit on the couch, gazing at the blank canvas snow has made of our yard.

Creek after a fresh snow

The contrast between inside and outside makes me feel very hygge. Hubbykins just left on a work trip and hiking plans with a friend are canceled, so it’s just me and Nosie, hunkering down for the next few days before a brand new beginning.

For all these reasons, and especially because of the intense coziness of my surroundings, I decided to set up my laptop near the fireplace to write to you.

Here is what is on my mind:

As many of you might remember, I celebrate each January with a “word of the year” necklace. My 2025 word came to me very easily. My word this year is “start.”

There is, or at least there can be, a simplicity to starting. And this feels especially refreshing after the anything-but-simple two years since my cardiac arrest. After agonizing about what to do with myself, what a near-death experience means, how to get better despite chronic diagnoses, etc., etc., it’s nice to think that in one week from today, there won’t be much time to aimlessly ponder the “what if” and “why” of everything. At least not on a daily basis.

I’ve worried every which way I can worry about this next step I’m taking. To work towards licensure as an LPC and open my own private practice feels like a completely natural progression given my interests, talents, and priorities. At the same time, it feels like a completely loony midlife-crisis response to what I’ve been through lately. Whatever goes seriously wrong in the next five years that it will take to accomplish this goal, it probably won’t be something I imagined. But at long last, it doesn’t matter. The bill for the first semester has been paid. I’m about to be on a full-time calendar that isn’t my own for the first time in 18 months. Ready or not (and how could one ever be ready to do such a thing?!), I’m starting.

It’s totally in character that the closer I get to the beginning of classes, the more excited and carefree I feel. Few people are particularly good at the liminal spaces in our lives, but I’m particularly terrible at them. I’m more comfortable executing a decision than making one, apparently. It’s not lost on me that part of why I’m so welcoming to a listless week spent in front of the fire is that what comes next is go-time and challenge. A new career. The complete opposite of hygge.

Staying warm by the fire

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why this career path, and how to keep any career path from eating my life and sanity the way the previous two did. Eventually, I decided that I don’t feel at the same risk for workaholism. I’ve had the unpleasant experience of processing a lot of the fears, personal flaws, and trauma that inspired a previous addiction to performance and status. Those things in me aren’t gone—far from it—but they’re above the table now. Which means they can’t surreptitiously steal the show.

I’m about halfway through Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals, one of those books I chose to read at just the right time. In comparing notes with Burkeman, I’m already finding that I’m well on my way to the “imperfectionism” he markets. I wanted to stay a compulsive optimizer when my body began falling apart, but I couldn’t do it. A few people suggested I might someday feel grateful that whatever mysterious things happened to my health happened, and I still get angry when I think about that assertion—but that doesn’t mean I won’t try to use the hand I’ve been dealt. So, yes, the health scares served as a shake-up to prove my vulnerability and fallibility on a whole new level. Is it any wonder, then, that I didn’t know how to go back to helping organizations plan the perfect initiatives and continually optimize their productivity? That endeavor feels so beside the point, from where I stand now. All I can see, when I look around the world, are peoples’ beating hearts and inner lives.

If there’s one lesson from my 18 months of sabbatical, it’s that there’s magic in just getting started, any way we can. Just walking a block when a mile is out of reach. Ambling along a flat surface when hills make us dizzy. Swapping one sweet dessert for popcorn, one day of the week. Getting a single appointment with a top cardiologist (I can decide after I meet him if it’s worth the few hours’ drive to permanently change doctors). Trying the random online dance class that intrigues me—I don’t need to explain to anyone why. Signing up for a group facilitation role even though I’m not sure how long I want to keep doing it. Ordering my first pickleball paddle and going to a beginner’s workshop. Applying to grad schools. Setting an alarm and practicing yoga with my husband one weekday…and then another…until it’s a new “dailyish” habit, to use a Burkeman term. Booking the trip to Curaçao because Chris and I have to start tackling our travel bucket list somewhere.

I would have loved to carefully plot out my initiatives and maximize the post-traumatic growth to be gleaned from some very bad physical ailments. But of course recovery didn’t work like that. I just fumbled around for a bit, and then I got started.

When I look back at the past year, I see magic in the little starts, even sometimes the false ones. Sitting here in my living room, I’m surrounded by gifts from my past starts. I think about starting to house hunt in a much bleaker winter four years ago, after a breakup and pandemic job change. Starting to date again, and meeting Chris. Starting the process of training a service dog in case my seizures came back, and ending up with a half-pet/half-therapy supervizsla who has helped me through much worse things than seizures.

Pointing at birds in the snow

I have no idea what I’m waltzing into next week when I log onto online classes at WVU and undertake yet another journey. I’m steeped in wisdom from all my past starts, though. So maybe my extreme coziness today isn’t only a matter of the roaring fire, pho broth, mint tea, and snow-covered landscape…because if there’s one thing my health scares have required of me, it’s been this comfort with starting. And re-starting. And starting yet again. Taking that next small step right now, any way that I can.

Wishing you your own cozy new beginnings in 2025! If you’re methodically checking off resolutions, more power to you. Get it, friend! I’ve been there. Those days can surely be rewarding.

If you’ve totally given up on perfectionism and any semblance of control over your own fate, as I have, join me in making some cozy little starts. Thrive with me a little, moment by moment, figuring out what we can do, realistically, today. Enjoying what doesn’t hurt and focusing on gratitude for whatever is possible. Enjoy letting go of the idea that we have to know the ending, or even to steer.

Whatever way you choose to roll into your new year, stay cozy. <3