How Do You Measure a Year?
TOPICS DISCUSSED
How do you wrap up your year?
Setting goals, resolutions, and intentions for the New Year
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EPISODE RESOURCES
Sarah’s Memory Making App and Resources
TRANSCRIPT
Sarah [00:00:00] Hello, this is Sarah. We are currently on a two week holiday break here at Pantsuit Politics, but we prerecorded this episode special just for you. We sat down with our entire team and talked about our end of the year rituals and how we set goals and intentions for the new year and we really hope you enjoy it. We'll be back from break and responding to the news in 2022.
Sarah [00:00:32] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:33] And this is Beth Silvers.
Sarah [00:00:35] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics. Hello, everyone, welcome to a very special episode of Pansuit Politics. We have our team here. Beth and I are here with Alise and Maggie, and we brought the team together to talk about how we wrap up the year and how we set goals, resolutions, rituals for the new year. I'm so excited. And we have lots of different ages, lots of different life experiences, and that's why we thought it'd be fun to bring the team together and talk through how we handle all this. Lots of personalities. It's important. It's fun.
Beth [00:01:25] So it's kind of a fully Outside of Politics episode.
Sarah [00:01:27] Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's my favorite time of year. I love hard endings and fresh beginnings. Also, the school year is not quite as good as the calendar year so I'm thrilled to be here with everybody having this conversation. Maybe that's what we should start with. How does everybody feel about the end of the year and the new year, generally, when it comes around on the calendar? Beth, you start.
Beth [00:02:05] I like a change. I really like a change of any variety, I'll take it in any form. I loved a new semester when I was in school. And this is really as close as we get as adults to truly a new semester. It's a little bit tricky because, man, I hate the winter weather in January and February. I know we differ on this, Sarah, but I really -- by the middle of February, I'm crawling out of my skin, so I don't love that so much. But I like turning the page on the calendar and just trying to think about what do I want to do? It's like it's a question asking time and I love that. What about you, Maggie?
Maggie [00:02:42] I love a new year. And, actually, so what I love about it is today is actually -- when we're recording, it's my husband's birthday. And then we get the new year and then we get my birthday in January. So it's like I get to slide in and then I get a do-over on my birthday in case I wasn't ready by New Year's.
Sarah [00:03:01] [laughing] What about you, Alise?
Alise [00:03:02] I feel very similarly to Beth in that I like the fresh start aspect of it. I love the analogy to Syllabus Day, Sarah, because -- I mean, I loved it as a student, I loved it when I was a professor. I'm not in the Higher Ed anymore, but I still carry that Higher Ed energy with me, and the fresh start feels exciting. I also just love the openness and possibility of a new year. And I like a clean ending too. Like, all right, we're wrapping things up. We're putting things away. It feels nice to end the year in a holiday season where we get a minute -- at least in my life this is the way it works, so there's a minute to actually like rest and relax. My husband and I, at least up until this point in our lives, the holiday season has involved just a lot of getting to lay around and be together and not have a lot of obligations. And I really love just having that minute to take a breath and then have a whole fresh new year with new energy. It's great.
Sarah [00:04:07] I don't feel like we're really illustrating the difference in personalities. We're all clearly like A-plus students who are like, "We love it, we love the fresh start." We don't have anybody who's like, "Meh!" Now, I will say that my orientation to the end of year and the new year, like my rituals surrounding how I wrap up the end of the year and start fresh, has changed a lot since I became an Episcopal because we celebrate Epiphany, which is January six this year. So we continue to celebrate Christmas. I love the 12 days of Christmas. For y'all who don't know, that is the actual 12 days of Christmas, they start on Christmas Day and fall through Epiphany. And so I keep the trees up. I do, kind of, a soft close. Some of the fake trees come down a little bit at a time, so that's all that's left on that final day is the real tree. And it's been really good for me, though, because I used to put a lot of pressure on myself to have everything down on December 31st and be ready to institute an entire litany of resolutions on January 1st. And now this has created, sort of, a soft edge to both transitions and help me embrace the entire month of January as the fresh start. So my orientation has shifted quite a bit and I have a lot more wind down time. So what do you guys do in the wind down? What do you do to wind up the previous year?
Beth [00:05:36] I love that journey for you, but I am a hard stop kind of person on the Christmas season. I like the first week of January to have a clean house. Decorations put away, gifts have found their home within our home and we are off to the races. I'm not hardcore about resolutions as much as the physical space. I like to turn that page with the calendar.
Sarah [00:06:00] Can I just interject here that this could be a part of your difficulty by the end of February. Because it creates such a cold feel when you strip all the lights away and start January 1st by the end of February you're like, hm! I take the Christmas down but I put up winter decorations. So I leave lots of twinkle lights and snowflake decor because I did find like it gets -- it's like it's kind of cold, literally, outside and inside when you strip everything away like that.
Beth [00:06:30] I keep a cozy vibe.
Sarah [00:06:31] Okay. I do love a cozy.
Beth [00:06:34] Lots of furry pillows and candles and things like that. But I want anything glittered out. I want all that glitter out. I want anything that has little pine needles gone. I'm ready for it to be clean.
Alise [00:06:45] You sound so much like my husband, Beth. He is like the morning after Christmas, he wants it all to come down. He's like, "It's the 26th, tear it down. We're out." Whereas, when we started dating -- our first date was at the end of January and well into February, our first few dates. My college roommate and I, my best friend who I lived together after college, we still had our Christmas tree up, like a fake Christmas tree, up well into February that year, our first year as adults out of college. I like your point there, Sarah, that it keeps things feeling cozy. Now, I will say I feel less of a need for that now living in North Carolina than when we lived in the Midwest, where it was January and February brutally cold, really hard to get through. But here, and Maggy you can speak to us even more, in Florida, the sun is still shining in January and February. I don't need quite as much of the fun inside because there's still good things happening outside.
Maggie [00:07:44] January is literally the best month of the year to live in Florida. Like this people like we just lived here for like the whole -- like we just suffered through the rest of the year so we can have January. I highly recommend snowboarding.
Alise [00:07:54] You deserve at least one good month to live in Florida.
Maggie [00:07:56] You get the fresh strawberries, you get blueberries like all the citrus. Like perfect life.
Sarah [00:08:02] Okay. So besides just stripping out the Christmas decorations, does anybody have any end of year rituals that they do besides just taking down holiday decorations?
Maggie [00:08:15] So I have my karate school business, so we always do like a year-in-review of everything that we've done over there which I find really fun. Because what this gets into what I do for the new year is, I make just a list of things. Gretchen Rubin does that. Like she started a couple of years ago with like 19 for 2019 and 20 for 2020. Anyway, 22 things is too many, so I stick with like 15. But so I make a list at the beginning of the year. And then I compare it at the end of the year that I complete my quests. I like that.
Beth [00:08:49] How does it feel to you when, I don't know, the year has not been what you expected it to be, and in ways that changed what the quest could be? What does it mean to you if you look at the desires from the previous year and they seem off at the end of the new year?
Maggie [00:09:07] Well, so like this year, I spent the spring teaching math in a high school and I just look back at that and I'm like -- you know, I spent so much time wondering if I was missing my calling by not being a math teacher, that I'm just so grateful that I did it, that I hated it, and I never have to do it again. I'm so grateful. I'm nothing but gratitude.
Sarah [00:09:28] [laughing] Now you know. We do something similar. We have a big poster on our wall that's our hall and family goals. Like how many nights did we want to sleep outside. How many days did we want to spend outside. And I, kind of, mess with different sections of it. I try to do like a section this year, to speak to your question, Beth, was just a failure. It did not work. Setting some household goals, one of which was for my little boys to remember to flush the toilet. So, just really aspirational stuff here, and it didn't really work. There was not a way to keep up with it and really measure it. So I'm going to work on that this year. Because that's to me it's like if you didn't meet the goal, it's it's not a reason to say you're the worst or you failed. It's more like, well, what prevented you from reading? Like what was the barrier? What's the support that's missing? That's what I really try to keep my eyes on when I'm looking back over the year and think, "Okay, well, this is what I wanted to happen this year, and it didn't. But like why?" And so like problem solving mode, not judging mode.
Beth [00:10:24] I like that. What about you, Alise?
Alise [00:10:26] You know, thinking about this, how to wrap up the year, I often feel like I'm coming in to the end of the year with just some crash and burn energy. I'm worn out and I'm exhausted. And so I don't think I have a lot that closes out the year in formal ways. It's really that leading into rest and allowing myself some space to reset. I will say the one thing I'm super intense about is my reading. I read a lot, usually just over a hundred books a year. I have a spreadsheet, it's color coordinated. I get a lot of joy out of tracking what I'm reading, looking back at the list, making a fresh list for the next year. So I bring a lot of that real intense type-A energy that in many ways I have done a better job releasing as I've gotten older. I mean, it's not released don't get me wrong, I still have lots of it. But around the end of the year and goal setting, I have tried to do better at it but I still hold on to it very intensely around my good reads goal and the spreadsheet of books. And did I make it? And how much of what type of books did I read? And in theory, I also make like a yearbook, a picture book for us every year. I'm a couple of years behind. I need to catch up on that.
Sarah [00:11:43] Well, I changed my process around that this year. I usually do that too, put all the pictures, but it was such a heavy lift at the end of the year so I tried something different. This year I used an app. It's around the project 52 people who do like a heavy scrapbook page every week. I didn't do that. But I love this app, it's just called Project Life. It's so powerful. I can pull all the pictures from my phone. I can write over top of them really easily. I can add in a little journal card. It takes me like two to three minutes. I've been doing the year, so I'll be able to just print that and be done within five minutes at the end of the year. I'm going to wait until I see how the book prints out. It's more expensive than like the Snapfish books and stuff, and I just want to make sure I like the final product. But the app has been like game changing for that sort of end of the year process because I would used to have to sit down, upload all the pictures, decide what order I want to put them in, and it's like it's a lift, man. But I'm loving this. Especially if you take all your pictures on your phone, this app is really powerful and really, really cool. So I will report back on the product. But I do that as well, I print out all my photos for the end of the year.
Alise [00:12:48] Yeah, I need to check that out then because I think the barrier for me of why I end up behind, I'm doing something like a yearbook situation which I really do love. I love having for us of every year that we've been married. I think it's the lack of systemsation. I'm a systems person and I think if I just checked in with it, you know, once a month even, it would feel a lot easier at the end of the year. And I'd get that really wonderful feeling of accomplishment of like, I did this.
Sarah [00:13:14] And it's just also fun to look through the pictures, like, that's a really good, important process, I think. I do that and then I do some journaling. I really like Susanna Conway's Unravel Your Year. It's like a printable journal she sends out for free, and I really like that journal. And then she has like a month break down like you can kind of process your month. And she has just really good questions like, what felt uncomfortable this year? And what did you discover about yourself? Just stuff like that. I love a journal. I love a journal ritual. What about you, Beth?
Beth [00:13:45] I just want to pop in and say that Unravel Your Year, we've done some of this together and I think that was a hugely helpful partnership exercise. I really enjoyed the months that we remembered to go through those questions together. I thought it was really beneficial. So I have a list of questions that I developed when I had a coaching practice that is a look at what do I want to feel like in the next year? What do I want to learn more about? What do I want to experience? What do I want to prioritize? And then I have a little section at the end that basically tries to pull everyone back from the brink of making a hundred resolutions by just asking -- when I look at all these questions, I just answered what I'm I most drawn to and what would I actually be willing to do to move in the direction of this answer? What am I not willing to do? Let me be honest with myself about that. And then I try to drill that down to three commitments and think about what support I need to honor those commitments. So I can update the year on this and maybe put it in our show notes as a link if people would like to use that exercise.
Sarah [00:14:55] Yeah, and I'll put the journal and the app in the links as well. What about you, Maggie? Do you do any journaling or end of the year emotional processing beyond your business? No is an accepted answer.
Maggie [00:15:07] I don't journal, no. What we usually do is we actually have this very sweet thing we do. We call our weekly family meeting where we make a list -- and I include my kids, which is very fun because my five year old has very strong opinions -- of like what went well that week and what we want to do differently in the next week.
Sarah [00:15:25] I love that.
Maggie [00:15:25] And we do that as like a year recap. We also do like a family photo book which I have not made in two years, and my kids are very into the family photo book. I also like Beth's coaching questions because I did coaching with Beth, and they're very good. I highly recommend them.
Alise [00:15:41] Maggie, I love that idea of the weekly family meeting. Also, this just reminded me of something not that we do, but some of our dear, dear, friends do. In fact, Amy is a listener of the show. So hi, Amy, you're wonderful. They write down all the funny things like quotes and things that happen to them throughout the year and put them in a jar. And then at the end of the year, they pull them out and read them.
Sarah [00:16:02] Oh, I love that.
Alise [00:16:03] And they're reminded of all those funny moments and funny quotes throughout the year, and oftentimes she'll post them on social media so that everyone can enjoy the best ones. But I think that's such a fun tradition and such a hopeful and fun way to reflect on a year, even when a year is really hard.
Sarah [00:16:19] Yeah, that's great. I love that. I love that little ritual.
Maggie [00:16:23] I love that idea. That's the kind of thing I always like my aspirational self would love to do. And my actual self, I'm not that person but I love that there are people like that.
Sarah [00:16:34] [laughs] Now, what about actual New Year's Eve? Are you party people? Are you in bed by 10 p.m. people?
Alise [00:16:40] I have a fantasy that I'm a party person. I would love to. Some year of my life I want to get very dressed up and go to a fancy party where people are drinking champagne and there's a live band playing jazz standards. I want that experience at some point. And, also, I'm realistic that my husband and I are stay home, don't socialize, be in bed early. This year will be different because I'm pregnant and we won't do anything. Although, maybe that's not that different because we haven't done much the last few years. But in my heart, I would like us to be part of people. I always stay up at least to watch the ball drop. My husband will go to sleep and sometimes I'll stay up and watch, you know, the five minutes of it right around midnight and then I'll feel good and go to sleep. But I like to be -- I like to market and just even the tiniest way.
Sarah [00:17:33] What about you, Maggie?
Maggie [00:17:35] I have a very anxious dog and a lot of neighbors who are super into fireworks.[laughs] So usually I spend New Year's Eve trying to calm my poor suffering dog. I did figure out doggy's medicine for that kind of thing. I figured that out last year.
Sarah [00:17:53] Yeah. They have CBD for dogs and stuff.
Maggie [00:17:55] We didn't get that, but we got something like that. I don't know. I just asked about it and they said, "Here this is what you need." She was much happier. So, yeah, I spent a lot of New Year's Eve with my suffering dog. And, also, one of my daughters is very sensitive to the loud noises. And so she just like sits near him and it's like, why is all the noise happening?
Sarah [00:18:14] It's a new year.
Maggie [00:18:15] Because we're in Florida and that's what people do. I don't know. I like to go to sleep because I like to wake up fresh on New Year's Day rather than stay up late on New Year's Eve. I just, kind of, have let go of that. When I was a kid growing up, we would have like a big New Year's Eve family party where we would all stay up until midnight. And I think I have just done that for my life.
Alise [00:18:37] Sarah, it feels like you're the type of person who would really want to mark the new year in an exciting way. Is that accurate?
Sarah [00:18:42] Yes, I'm a party person. When I moved to Paducah, I joined Charity League, which is like our version of Junior League, and they hold a big fancy New Year's Eve party. So I went to that before I joined and then as I was joined I was literally required to go. So I went for years, got Rent The Runway, was super fun. And then I took a break because I was required to go for so many years. I'm kind of ready to go back. But then we have friends who usually come for New Year's Eve. Last year they were in Europe and we went to bed early and I did not like it, and I will not be doing that again. That was not for me. I do not like going to bed pretending like it's a normal night. I did not like that. Fail. Won't be doing that again.
Alise [00:19:20] Can I just say that a party you're required to go to doesn't sound like a party?
Sarah [00:19:25] Still fun. No, it was still fun.
Maggie [00:19:25] I would never join a club where I was required to stay until midnight. [laughs]
Sarah [00:19:28] Yeah. No, it was still fun because it's like a big -- I mean, Paducah's social scene is not so big. You know what I'm saying? Like most people are there. They always had really great deejays and a big fun moment where balloons dropped and we all had champagne and that was like very traditional. And the stressful part is you had to sell a certain amount of tickets. That's what made it sort of stressful and ready to abandon. But, I mean, it was a fund raiser, so that made sense. But I loved it. I loved they moved to floor length gowns at a certain point which made it even more fun and fancy. So I'm here for the fancy. I think this year we might do like a combination of the adults go out and get a little fancy and then come back and celebrate midnight with all the kids because my boys love it. They freakin love New Year's Eve. They love all the fun party games and the balloons. We've done balloon drops in our great room, which has a vaulted ceiling which is really fun. I just love it. I agree that it does kind of stink to start the year tired a little bit. But the other big thing that's a part of our New Year's Eve schedule is our local dealers has a phenomenal New Year's Eve sale where it's literally the entirety of Paducah. So it's like it's like the after party. The next morning, we all go to Dillard's and buy all the things. So that's part of our New Year's Eve ritual now, too. So it's not like I'm like going out and running three miles. I'm just getting up early and going to Dillard's or whatever. What about you, Beth, are you a party person or not?
Beth [00:20:45] Well, growing up, my best friend's birthday was New Year's Eve --
Sarah [00:20:50] Oh, fun.
Beth [00:20:50] And so I have so many wonderful memories of spending the night at her house and celebrating her birthday on New Year's Eve. And I like sitting at the kitchen table, cutting up construction paper to make our own confetti.
Sarah [00:21:02] Oh, fun.
Beth [00:21:03] And I think I'm always chasing something that feels like that New Year's Eve, because it was just -- it was such a wonderful time. So I host New Year's Eve for our friends, some years that's a big group, some years it's a small group. But it is very much pf wear your pajamas but let's have fancy appetizers. And last year a friend made special nonalcoholic drinks that we could all have that the kids felt very, very, fancy about. And so we don't stay up until midnight because I don't want to be tired and also I don't want my children to be tired. It's probably more that than me, but I love and so appreciate the ball drops that you can just turn on when you're ready for that moment. And so we end the party by doing that, letting the kids have the hooray exciting moment. Everybody writes some resolutions and goes home. So it's perfect for this season of life. I'm very much like you, Alise. There is a particular dress that I want, and I have a vision of someday being at a big fancy New Year's Eve party that is explicitly for adults that I do not host, but just go get to enjoy. But I just feel like that's For a different season. And right now I really want my daughters to love New Year's Eve the way that I grew up loving it, which was just like being at home, but it feeling really special still. I love that. I love that.
Sarah [00:22:23] All right. Next up, we'll tackle the resolutions. All right. Who writes, like, officially writes down resolutions?
Beth [00:22:50] Oh, I do.
Sarah [00:22:51] You do. Okay, beth does. Maggie?
Maggie [00:22:53] Yes.
Sarah [00:22:54] Okay. Alise?
Alise [00:22:55] I really don't. This is part of me trying to let go of some of that energy, and this is a space in my life where I have become more comfortable letting it go. I used to very much be like write it all down. Get the new habit tracker on January 1st, and there are 17 things that I need to do every day of this new year. And inevitably that fails.,right? Like you can't sustain that. And I think I've gotten better at setting more intention throughout the year of trying to not see it all wrapped up in this one day or this one moment, this is the one chance for a restart. But just being less specific, I think about what I want so that there is less disappointment when I inevitably don't drink enough glasses of water every single day of the whole year.
Sarah [00:23:45] That's okay. All right, Maggie, how explicit are your resolutions?
Maggie [00:23:48] Well, I think that I like to be more of like a word of the year kind of person.
Sarah [00:23:51] That's what I was going to say. Mine have definitely shifted from a resolution to a word of the year saying.
Maggie [00:23:57] Yeah. And I also try to come back around like maybe quarterly, but in the summer, like when school gets out, there's an opportunity to sort of reset, reevaluate what you're doing. But I feel like I found my list that I made at the beginning of this year. And some of the stuff that I was, like, I want to do this year was super easy. I wanted to get my button that unlocks my cars fixed because it needed a new battery, which literally was like $3 and 15 minutes. But I did it, and just looking back at that, I'm like, "Yeah, that was so satisfying."
Sarah [00:24:35] Look at me knocking that off like a boss. That is too funny. What about you, Beth?
Beth [00:24:39] I write mine down. I am pretty specific. Although they're not quantifiable things because you know how I'm, kind of, against measurement. But I will set intentions. You know, like this is how I want to feel or I want to prioritize my physical health or whatever this year. I'll tell you what, it helps me a lot that we do our words of the year and share them. There's real accountability than having announced your word of the year on the internet. I like that we share our political resolutions because that's professional goal setting that you have real accountability around. I have but one resolution for 2022 personally.
Sarah [00:25:15] I'm excited.
Beth [00:25:16] It's going to have some parts, I think. But my one resolution -- I feel like somehow I allowed 2021 to pass in a haze. Like I have not felt the passage of time this year.
Sarah [00:25:31] Interesting.
Beth [00:25:31] It is the weirdest thing. I cannot believe it's December. And I have felt that way every new month. I'm like, what? It's October. What? It's June. How did June get here? I don't know if it was, kind of, a defense mechanism against experiencing some disappointment after 2020 or what. But I feel like this year has just completely passed me by and I do not like it. And so my 2022 resolution is just to feel time.So I think that's going to mean really sitting down with my kids -- I've done this for Christmas, what do you really want to make sure that we do around Christmas? Gingerbread was at the top of their list Great. So I want to do that for every month next year. Like what do we really want to make sure that we experience in this time of the year because I don't want to get to December 2022 and feel this mushiness that I feel this year.
Sarah [00:26:30] That's interesting. Do you just feel like it went fast or you really feel like you just didn't soak it in?
Beth [00:26:38] Both. I mean, maybe some of it is because it was our 40th birthday year, so I put a lot of my thought into just turning 40 and how do I want to feel about that? But I don't even feel like it's been a birthday. I had a wonderful 40th birthday celebration, but other than that, I look back on the year and think, "What did I do this year?" I don't know. It's like a flat lining that I do not want to experience again.
Sarah [00:27:03] That's interesting. I mean, I think I avoid -- I'm aware of that of myself. I just don't have a great memory. I just don't have a strong memory for things. Like I need the triggers I need -- so I'm a pretty devoted memory keeper. I do the Project Life. I didn't do -- actually, I subsumed a lot of the things I usually do like Week in the Life and December Daily under this new app. I must say how I ended up liking it. But I actually found out what I did this year, here's a suggestion, is I did a lot of video memory keeping, which I really enjoyed. Like I did the lip synching thing when we were on our vacation in Florida and we lip synced Kokomo. And I took a lot of one second videos over the summer. I'm doing a one second a day for December Daily and I just love the video. Like it just makes it -- you're there. You're like in the moment in a way you aren't with pictures. And I'm really liking it, I'm trying to do more of that because it does help me feel those different moments of the year. I love one second a day. I think it is a phenomenal app.
Beth [00:28:02] So here's my struggle because I'm not looking for more tasks, I don't know if memory keeping -- my heart is open to the idea that memory keeping would help me, but I'm also thinking about like memory making. Like here's an example. We love kayaks. We didn't take them out this summer, and I don't know why, and I don't know how the summer just ended and we hadn't done it. So there's a part of me that just wants to make sure that I don't miss the season in a way that I feel like I missed some of the seasons this year.
Sarah [00:28:33] Well, I think that's why the new year's so powerful. And that's what we really try to do with our family goal poster that we hang up on the wall. So we keep that stuff ever present. This is what's important to us. We want to go outside. This is what's important to us. We want to work on giving back. Just like putting it in and it hangs in our kitchen and we look at it and we mark them off. And as far as the like memory keeping, memory making, one of our executive producers, Ali Edwards, y'all, she invented the game. She invented it. I read about her Week in the Life in Real Simple 15 years ago, and I thought this woman has change the game. She didn't even change it. Again, she invented a whole new game. It's so amazing what she does. And she has classes and journaling. Her Word of the Year journal was amazing. She's just so brilliant. And it's like when you work with and you do her stuff long enough, it's like you develop this whole other part of your brain that it's not a task, but it's like developing new awareness. I love her so much. I love her. If this is a part of your New Year's, Aliedwards.com, man, y'all, she's so, so, good at this. So good at it.
Alise [00:29:45] I think what I'm realizing over the course of this conversation is that one of the reasons I have let go some of this around the new year is because I'm hyper intense about it throughout the year. The To-Do list making, and the tracking of things, that's just like my personality naturally is to just have a very, very, tight handle on all of that. And this conversation is making me think about what you were saying, beth, the bigger picture intentionality of what do I want this summer to look like, or this season, or this month?
Sarah [00:30:16] At least this is a good transition to the big life change and how you're thinking about your new year now that you're going to have a baby and that's going to -- I don't know if you've thought about this, it's going to change some things.
Alise [00:30:28] Yeah, I'm having a very [laughs] hard time. I'm having a very hard time thinking about what does 2020 to look like. My therapist lovingly suggested that my word for this season maybe should be unknown. I did not appreciate that suggestion. I'm trying to hold 2022 very loosely because I do feel like the biggest thing I know about next year right now is that I have absolutely no idea what's coming for me. And that's really hard for someone with my personality type.
Sarah [00:31:01] I mean, you do. It's a baby.
Alise [00:31:03] Well, yeah.
Sarah [00:31:04] It's a baby. That's what's coming for you.
Alise [00:31:06] Correct? Yes, it is. And also, you know, what will his personality be like and will he sleep? And what will be the best method for us on any litany of things? And there's so much information and trying to process it, but also not to get too deep in the weeds on it. And we're doing a lot of purging in our life right now, of trying to clean out both our house and just just trying to purge a lot. I've been really upping, trying to -- well, not upping. Trying to be more consistent about having meditation practice and clear out my mind and just trying to create more space in every way in my life. Because I know that 2022 is going to fill all of those spaces in very new and very different ways that I have not experienced before, and I do have some anxiety about that. I mean, I'm sure it will be wonderful and very difficult.
Sarah [00:31:57] Well. I've done this three times, the whole baby, and I would say as a person who like loves control, loves tight To-Do list and measurements and the whole scene, I think what I learned from particularly babies is just I developed a really much more valuable skill, which was just a responsiveness, just a like surfing versus hiking, you know what I mean? We're not starting. We're not pushing through. We're not getting to the endpoint. We are very much in tune with our surroundings and we're going to surf what comes. And it's like a give and take between me and the ocean. You know what I mean? Because at the end of the day it's a ocean, and there's only so much I can do. I don't know if you've ever surfed. It's very fun. But it's a totally different thing. It's a different thing. And I think, like surfing ,that what a baby can teach you. It's just how to ride the wave.
Alise [00:33:05] I really like that analogy also because -- I don't know how you all feel. I think for the last two years, particularly with the pandemic, I mean, really like the last five years, but especially the last two with the pandemic, I have really learned a lot about surfing versus hiking and releasing expectation about what comes next. And being more comfortable with ambiguity and the unknown, which we know is great probably preparation for preparing [crosstalk] .
Sarah [00:33:34] Well, it's like you catch the wave or you don't, but you learn either way, right?
Alise [00:33:37] Yeah. I'm just like, do the rest of you feel that way just in general from the last few years of just that you're more comfortable with the ambiguity of the unknown and of what comes next?
Beth [00:33:46] For sure, it's a little bit of a Wizard of Oz situation, I think. Because I think the biggest thing I've heard from motherhood and as I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking about how many people are listening right now who find it painful for a variety of reasons to listen to any conversation that concerns pregnancy, birth, children. What I wish I could go back and say to myself before I had kids is that what having kids taught me is that I have so much more freedom to design my life in a way that makes me happy than I ever took. I think for a lot of people, when you add kids it is a constriction. For me, it was an expansion. It was the moment when I realized you are allowed to be happy. You are allowed to make changes. You are allowed to set an example that you would wish for someone else to follow, not be like cramming yourself into a tiny little pattern. And that was available the whole time. I mean, that's why I say Wizard of Oz. It was kind of like, oh, it was here the whole -- you didn't have to go on this journey, but you did. So I wish I could go back and give that freedom to my pre mom self that I found through having kids. And, yeah, that means embracing like a ton of unknowns. You stay on the path because there's something comforting about the path, but also the world gets a lot more beautiful when you realize you can get off it.
Alise [00:35:07] I think faith deconstruction has been a big part of that for me too, of realizing, oh, there's so much beauty outside of these prescribed limits and rules and regulations and dogmas. But there's so much more space out here than I thought there was.
Sarah [00:35:25] What about you, Maggie?
Maggie [00:35:26] Well, I feel like everything that has happened since I graduated from college has just been like, "Oh, everything you thought about what your life as an adult was going to be like was completely wrong" and just getting progressively more okay with that. I mean, I'm a control enthusiast. But I feel like any time I'm like, "I don't have to be in charge of that." Whether it's somebody else's response or making like my relatives happy with how I choose to spend my holidays or life, just any time I let go of that, it's like, "Oh, that's good. That's really good."
Sarah [00:36:10] I'm hearing through the grapevine that there's been some criticism of my holiday playlist because it is very melancholy in portions.
Alise [00:36:18] Sarah, I was going to tell you this we haven't spoken in a few days. I listened to it over the weekend and I love it. I think it's great. I need to put together an excellent playlist. And I love Christmas melancholy.
Sarah [00:36:29] I love the melancholy. And here's why. Because I think it's so beautiful too. Like that moment [inadible] if the fates allow. Like we just don't know. It's beautiful to plan for the new year and it's beautiful to have a fresh start. But with any wisdom or experience, you learn that it is also going to contain some very hard things. And we don't know if we make it to the end, if everybody we love makes it to the end, but there's this this sense of this whole year stretching out in front of us and understanding that it could hold any manner of surprises. And that this fiction we tell ourselves that the biggest deal is how much self-control we can exercise over the next 12 months is really cute. It's a cute thing we do. But I think that's why I love the words of the year so much because I really try to think about like, I don't know, I don't know what this year is going to hold. I know how I feel at the end of the last one, which threw me a lot of curveballs as they inevitably do. And just remembering that, a guiding light, a guiding principle is going to serve me so much more than mountains of self-control or internal motivation. And looking back over the year and thinking, "Okay, but what did serve me?" I love the what's life giving, what's life draining questions? What did help me surf that wave? Be it an infant or a pandemic or a chronic illness or an unexpected relationship change? Like all those things, looking back and thinking,okay well -- instead of saying this is how I could get better thinking, "Okay, well, when I was exercising regularly, when I was meditating regularly, when I was making time for my friends, when I was really using this app or this journal to pay attention to how I'm feeling and what's going on around me, I just think that is infinitely more valuable."
Alise [00:38:39] And there's so much more kindness in that approach too. Kindness to yourself and other people.
Sarah [00:38:42] Gentleness. That was my word.
Alise [00:38:44] Gentlesness, yes.
Beth [00:38:45] My criticism of your Christmas list is 100 percent [Inaudible] the volume of Kelly Clarkson on it. [crosstalk] But I think you're right on with the melancholy though. Here's what I've been thinking about with that. There is certainty in the next year of sadness, right? Like you don't know what the next year is going to look like, but there is certainty of sadness. I recently cried my eyes out at this time lapse video of a grape turning into a raisin. And I think it's because you just know, looking forward, that everybody is aging. And I'm at an age now, we both are, where you look at your family and you know you'll attend a funeral next year. I don't know who it will be or under what circumstances, but you know you will.
Sarah [00:39:32] Mom and dad getting a little grayer.
Beth [00:39:35] And you know you're going to get a call from somebody that someone's in the hospital. Whatever wonderful things the next year could hold or that you have planned for yourself through these resolutions, it is a certainty that that hard stuff is coming. And I do think there's something almost important as nature is doing its death cycle to kind of be with all of that and feel your place in it. And I feel like it's a lot healthier to bring that energy to late December and early January than, sort of, I'm going to go conquer the world this year because that is going to be disappointing no matter what, right?
Sarah [00:40:16] We need that time. I know capitalism tells us we don't. I know capitalism tells us the time is always right to hack and self improve. But I think that time of -- it's not death, I mean, the leaves fall off the trees, but the trees don't die. And I think that just that hibernation and moment of giving up on relentless growth, right? Just having that moment to just settle and self-reflect, those are my most valuable rituals around the new year. Is where there's more self-reflection than there is self-improvement. That's what I've really shifted from, probably in the last 10 years. Is that relentless focus on self-improvement and more space and gentleness around self-reflection.
Alise [00:41:02] Again, it creates space this moment in time where we get to reflect think about what has been and what will be to come. And I love the seasonal aspect of it. I love spring. I love when the new buds come on the trees and there's suddenly color again. I mean, it's so deeply spiritual in so many ways. And there's something so hopeful about spring, but to get to the spring, you have to pass through the harder season and the harder part. And I hope that's the lesson that, I mean, I know I've taken from the last few years, and I hope that we all have to an extent of there has to be some pain sometimes before there's growth and newness and freshness. Well, that's a real bummer of a [crosstalk].
Sarah [00:41:48] No, it's not. The seasonality of life is a perfect transition out of this conversation especially as we are so grateful to be in a community that walks through us with all these different seasons and has wonderful reflections on what this means. And I never cease to be amazed at our community's ability to layer on complexity and beautiful rituals and ideas surrounding all times of year. But I know that they'll have them for this time of year. So we'll open up some conversations on our social media channels around everybody's New Year rituals, end of year reflections. We thank you so, so, much for joining us for another episode of Pantsuit Politics. We will be back for our last episode of the year on Friday. And until then, keep it nuance, ya'll.
Beth [00:42:52] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.
Sarah [00:42:57] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.
Beth [00:43:03] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers
Executive Producers [00:43:07] Marth Bronitsky, Ali Edwards, Janice Elliot, Sarah Greenup, Julie Haller, Helen Handley, Tiffany Hassler, Emily Holladay, Katie Johnson, Katina Zuganelis Kasling, Barry Kaufman, Molly, Kohrs. The Kriebs, Llaurie LaDow, Lilly McClure, Jared Minson, Emily Neesley, The Pentons, Tawni Peterson, Tracy Puthoff, Sarah Ralph, Jeremy Sequoia, Katie Stigers, Karin True, Onica Ulveling, Nick and Alysia Vileli, Amy Whited.
Beth [00:43:53] Melinda Johnston, Ashley Thompson, Michelle Wood, Joshua Allen, Morgan McHugh, Nichole Berklas, Paula Bremer, and Tim Miller.
Alise [00:43:53] Death is inevitable. Happy New Year everyone [laughs].