Birthday As New Year: Going Deep

“Have you thought about your new year at all?” My roommate asked me last weekend over breakfast. New year meaning my impending birthday—I’ve long treated my birthday as the true “turning over a new leaf” period, moreso than New Year’s Eve, because it is technically the beginning of my new year on Earth. So, like most people do on January 1st, on the July day I entered the world I reflect on what I learned, how I changed, and what I hope for the next year to come.

Normally, I start thinking about this some days, or even weeks, before. But this summer was a busy one, and at that point, two days before, I still hadn’t really thought about it, though I knew some things.

“I feel like this year I’m a lot more solid and centered. Confident. I’ve learned how to do what’s best for me in a better way, if that makes sense. I’m still really driven but I also know how to not be so hard on myself, and just do things that need to be done in the right way.”

Clearly, I didn’t really know what I was saying. Somehow, she seemed to understand. I’m good. I feel good. Things are good. As a person who tends to live in periods of highs and lows with not much middle ground (which my roommate lived through with me), being neither—being good—was unusual, but very welcome.

The next day, it was actually time to think about it. I pulled out my journal from the year prior and found the entry with my birthday musings. And what last-year-me said was surprising.

July 2014–July 2015 had been tumultuous. I fell in love and then that love went up in spectacular flames and made me depressed. I pulled myself out of depression. I applied to grad school, but before I got accepted I spent months anxiously agonizing that I wouldn’t. It was a big year of learning to navigate ups and downs, but by last July I was mostly off the rollercoaster. Yet being grounded didn’t feel as good to me then as it does now. I said that I “felt nothing.” I was “empty.” Not in a bad way, exactly. But in the aftermath of all these huge life moments, having nothing happening was startling. I had gotten a tattoo on my birthday last year, the words “NO TIME” on my right ring finger, and was hoping to use that as an impetus to do more and break out of this limbo.

What was the difference, I asked myself, between that nothingness and this feeling of blasé solidity I have now?

I didn’t quite know. So, like I do when I need to figure things out, I went to yoga. It was time to check in. Talking to people is one of the best forms of therapy. But right then, I needed to have a conversation with myself.

“Close your eyes,” the instructor said at the beginning of class. “And go deep.”

Go deep, I thought. I like that.

Laying on the mat just before class, thinking quietly (something I’ve learned to do more, and better, in the past year), I ran through all of 2015–2016. I went to grad school and learned to be a better writer. I quit my job and took a flying leap into the scary world of freelancing. I traveled often and became more spontaneous. I said “yes” to as many things as I could. But I also put my life on the back burner when I needed to to work on my writing. I learned to be alone, probably the most important thing.

A year can change a lot. A year can teach you a lot about yourself. This one had a lot of self-love in it, and I felt that while going through the poses, sweating buckets in the un-AC-ed room but still pushing myself to bend, stay, reach a little more. At the end of class, hugging my literally wet knees to completely-soaked chest, I was the most disgusting form of myself possible yet felt so much love for that person—a new-ish development and something I have certainly not always felt.

How you doing? I asked myself in shavasana as my breath slowed and I cooled down. It’s a thing I’ve been doing for years at the end of yoga. I have a conversation with my body and my mind, make sure both are doing okay, and if not, talk it out (in my head—not trying to scare all the other people in the class) to see what they need.

I’m great. I feel so ready for this year. Strong. Centered. Like I can finally take on anything and have it not be a big deal. It’s just life and work, and it’s all good. It was then I realized there was strength in this feeling of normalcy—what I called “nothing” last year. Those fallow moments where life isn’t wildly exciting or really terrible are when you can just be. And a year ago, I hadn’t yet figured out how to do that. When you’re navigating all the shit the world throws at you, a lot of it coming for the first time, it’s hard to do anything but duck, dodge, and try not to run off the road.

But this year, I’d already seen the shit. Already gotten hit with it. And knew that if it came at me again I’d come out okay, because I’d already gotten over it (whatever it was). I could stay on the course and just hop over whatever got in the way, maybe trip a little but not fall. The second time around of anything is never as intense as the first.

A lot of growing up is learning to manage expectations while keeping hope alive. It’s also about recognizing your own weaknesses or fears and learning to take risks in spite of them. Because once you’ve gotten a good handle on yourself, you can start to do more. You can go deep. Because you have to turn in before you can branch out.

I’m ready to go deep, I thought. Having spent the last year figuring out what I was capable of, it was time to push that forward.

On my actual birthday, after dinner and drinks and much celebration, my Post-Grad friend and I were ending the night with one last glass of wine. She’d written me a very nice card saying how proud she was of all the new things I was taking on, the person I was growing into, the exploration and chances and everything that I’d finally worked up the courage to do. I thanked her for it, truly, and mentioned my new philosophy of “go deep” versus last year’s of “no time.”

“I feel like now I can finally take all the risks I’ve always wanted to but been too scared or too safe to,” I told her. “Because I just feel really good in where I am and who I am. But it’s not about pushing myself too hard, which you know I’ve done. It’s just about really caring about the things that are important to me or that I want to pursue. Not doing them just to do them, but really making an effort to do them better. Seeing how great I can be in what I take on, and then not taking on stuff that might be not worth it.”

She agreed wholeheartedly, and mentioned how admiring she was of that. While that was nice to hear, for once, I wasn’t really looking for advice on it. I’d already talked it through with myself. And I felt good about it.

In my mind, it’s like I’m standing on a concrete block from which I can jump into any direction and then come back again to regroup and try something new. A home base of a self. My centeredness, my self-confidence, my feeling like I’d seen it all and could take it on again, allows me to entertain things I never would have before now.

It’s allowing me to “go deep.”