Letting Go Is the New Moving On

2021. It sounds like such a big number. 2020 did too, and we all thought, hmm, a momentous year indeed. Unfortunately, it did not turn out the way we had hoped for. Sure, it was significant, but in a Nero fiddled while Rome burned while a plague raged out of control way. So, here we are, on a new day in a new year that has begun.

The mood of today, compounded by the grey skies and unusual amount of rain, is not unlike the feeling I have on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. It makes sense, really, since it follows Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. If Rosh Hashanah is like New Year’s Eve, all fun and celebration and maybe a few drinks, it stands to reason that the suffering of Yom Kippur parallels the misery that is New Year’s Day. My husband refers to New Year’s Day as the Sunday of holidays, and he is not wrong.

The Jewish tradition of atoning for one’s sins is not as severe as you think. Rather than burning in hell for all eternity, we go with something more banal, that we have missed the mark, and we should do better. Be better. Be best? Anyway, the way I look at it, Jews get a another shot at redemption for our second new year’s resolutions, especially if we did not take it too seriously last October, when we had the chance. If at first you don’t succeed, blah, blah again.

I envy those people who do not do any self-reflection every January 1. Some people have decided long ago that setting resolutions does not serve them. Others make lofty goals for being kinder, thinner, or healthier. I disappoint myself enough on a daily basis that I do not need that kind of failure in my life, which is why I stick with the same resolution I have had for years: to read more books.

I love to read, mind you, so it is not such a struggle, but I have noticed my attention span is not always cooperative, especially since, oh, November of 2016. I typically set a goal of one book every two weeks, or 26 for the year, and honestly, I have failed to meet that seemingly simple goal for the past few years. Until 2020, when those of us who believe in science and love one another stayed home as much as possible.

Escapism through literature became a necessity during the pandemic, and I surpassed my arbitrary end zone with ease. I read some classics and some best sellers. I read historical fiction and mysteries. I read female and male authors. I even read some non-fiction, although I shied away from self-help books, because who needs that kind of pressure?

I decided that for 2021, I am going to level up and aim for 30 books. Same resolution, new number. You cannot expect change to happen if you continue to do the same thing, right? I am already halfway done with my first one, and if you are interested in following along with my good and poor choices, literally speaking, just friend me on Goodreads and watch my progress.

On another note, I did something unexpected, a bonus resolution, if you like. For the past few years, I have been holding onto unread email, as if I would miss out on something if I did not come back and read it. I’m good at responding to action emails, and I am pretty much on top of deleting and unsubscribing to those constant inbox fillers from every online store from which I have ever made a purchase. What I am not so good at doing, however, is reading those newsletters that arrive way too often for me. New recipes to try or travel hotspots to visit or lifehacks to embrace; they would all sit in my inbox, waiting for me to get around to opening them.

In November, my unread folder of life-improving emails had grown to almost 2,000. Clearly, I was not going to make time for them, for any of them, in the same way I did not make time for much other life improvement. I scanned through them, mostly just deleting, but only about a block of a 100 or so at a time. I updated my friend, MH, who is obsessively on top of her email, to be accountable, even though I never asked her to do that, nor did she offer. I just decided independently that she would be proud of me for weeding them out, for gaining control over this small segment of my life. And so, every time that number dropped, I reported it to her, and she would cheer me on, which kind of made me feel that she was okay with acting as some sort of email anonymous sponsor to me.

Yesterday, I was down to 61 unread emails. They dated back to 2016, the earliest from sometime after November. It was no coincidence. It was the time when life took a turn for the worse, and those activities and behaviors that I managed to keep my mental and physical health in check sort of became way less motivating to me. Those emails reflected what I had allowed to happen through inaction and passivity, and I was ready to part with them.

This morning, after wasting my “new normal” hour on my phone, I got up, had breakfast, and sat with my husband as he enjoyed a cup of coffee and some pre-game football shows. I went through the rest of my email, deleting as I went, from years-old committee back-and-forths to travel arrangements to shipping notifications from when my now 21-year-old was still in high school. I worked at it for a little while in front of the television, and then I realized I was down to just one unread email.

It was from the Van Gogh Museum, sent in the summer of 2018, when my family and I had planned a trip to Amsterdam after first visiting Iceland. We never made it to the Netherlands because my husband broke his ankle in three places while hiking in a lava field. Instead of seeing the museum or the Anne Frank House or a shit ton of bikes and tulips, we flew home for his surgery.

He is pretty much back to his new normal, which is to say he can walk and hike again, although he does have a nasty scar and lingering pain and numbness. It was a long and tough recovery, and it took a toll on all of us, at a time when we were solidly grieving what life in the US had become, on how we interacted with each other and the world around us, on how to find our place in a regressing and repressive society.

I opened the email; it contained a link to a personalized video to welcome me to the museum. I clicked on it, and much as you or any reasonable person might have expected, it was no longer valid. I had been holding on to this email in the hope that I would somehow be able to take that trip that was cancelled, to travel again as we once could, to have that experience I so desperately want yet have to be patient to have once again. I was waiting to see what I missed, and when I finally was ready to, that opportunity had passed me by.

I closed the tab to the Van Gogh Museum, and I deleted the email. Now I have none that is unread. I did it. I made a change, and all this on the first day of the New Year. With that change comes a sense of hope, however small, that maybe, this year will be better, and that I can do things to make myself happier if I just make the effort.

Whatever goals you set for yourself, make them achievable. I promise you that every victory, however small, is worth the energy you put into it, even if it is something as basic as cleaning out your inbox.