When less is not more

On Living: The intention I set for this year is a contradiction

At the end of every year, I like to think of a word that sets the intention for what I want to focus on the following year. It helps me bring focus and clarity to what I want to create in my life, day-to-day and as a whole. The word I keep coming back to for 2023 is:

This is the same word I had in 2021 when I was pregnant with my son. And here it is again, a reminder to scale back, to tune in to what matters, to simplify a life that can so easily unravel into busyness, distraction, and lost moments.

When I was thinking about what my word of the year would be this year, along with simplify, the phrase slow down kept coming back to me, flashing in my mind like one of those bright orange signs when you drive too fast in a construction zone. Slow down. Simplify. It’s clear that my subconscious is trying to tell me something.

I’ve spent this last year feeling overwhelmed and overextended in almost every area of my life. Between motherhood, work, and writing, I miss meals and showers, and exercise goals. I am constantly trying to throw something healthy together to feed my son at the last minute. I boil sweet potatoes and simmer beans in a crockpot and forever struggle to come up with something green he will eat. I make a game out of vacuuming so I can do it while I’m with him. I stuff things into drawers because I can’t stand to see my life so unorganized. My house is so dusty that you can write poems in the plant leaves. The weeping fig in my living room drops so many leaves a day it will be naked by spring. Part of me wishes all of my plants would die so they’d stop asking for things and so I wouldn’t feel guilty when I look at how poorly cared for they are. Letting my plants die is the only actionable way I’ve come up with to simplify my life. 

How do I simplify, slow down, take away, scale back when there’s nothing that can be given up? What if what I want to do, create, and experience feels like I’m adding more to my life, not less?

My work is already struggling and I need to be doing more with it, not less. The same goes for my writing. I want to write another book, a publishable short story, a poem that doesn’t suck, and I want to write pieces to be shared here. More, more, more. Last year, I published every single week (and sometimes more) here on Substack. I made a commitment and I followed through, but I didn’t touch my novel or start a new one. Besides two published essays, I didn’t write anything that wasn’t published here. So, as you can see, I can’t possibly write less. If I want to work on a larger work, I need to write more. But how? When?

Even with my son, who I’m with most of the day, I want to be doing more. I want to do more activities with him, more crafts, more cooking, and more exploring. More, more, more. I want to start a garden in the spring with him. I want to dig in the earth and plant tomatoes and peppers and kale—all the things he doesn’t eat, but I hope he someday will. I checked out a pile of gardening 101 books from the library two weeks ago, but they sit on my desk unopened, poetry and writing craft books stacked on top of them. I am overwhelmed by the whole process. Partly because I’ve never done it before, but mostly because I know how much time it will take—time I am already fighting for.

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I want to exercise more regularly. This winter I set a goal to peloton three times a week. That goal quickly decreased to once a week, which I followed for two weeks but have since abandoned altogether. I want more outside time, even when it’s cold out. I’m setting a goal of one thousand hours outside in 2023 and I hope to not only meet it but exceed it. I want to read more and travel more and cook more. More, more, more. I want to find the joy in cooking again—the unhurried dishes with a list of ingredients that flow off the page. I want to make bread and learn how to make the perfect falafel, the perfect biryani, and the perfect paneer. I want to learn guitar and Spanish and how to take better film photos.

Does this sound like simplifying to you? Does it sound like slowing down?

I know you’re probably thinking, “Life isn’t about more.” And you’re right. But I’m not wanting to do more and experience more for some arbitrary reason. I want more because I actually want to do these things. And I want to do them all with my son. I want to savor each and every thing so that the moment expands into a lifetime. But in order to savor, I need to slow down. I need to simplify so that the moment can have room to be whatever it is meant to be. 

Something has to give. But what? Where?

I’ve already cut so much out of my life that wasn’t adding anything to it—scaled back on friendships that no longer fit me, abandoned books that I didn’t love, held boundaries with my family and their problems, left toxic work clients. I've even done less of what I love doing—I sort and edit photos less even though it’s something I love, I write fewer letters and cards to the people I care for, I travel less to Michigan even though I miss my dad, I see my grandmother less, I workout less, stretch less, moisturize less, read less, clean less, organize less, I talk to my partner less, my mother less, my father less. So much less, and still, somehow I don’t have more. More time, space, and energy.

I rack my brain for what I can give up. I can stop watching The Office—my comfort show—before bed. I don’t watch it every night or even every other night, but when I don’t, I miss it. It’s not just that it feels good to laugh and zone out and do nothing, but it also feels good to do those things alongside my partner. It’s some of the only moments we get with just us, where we can cuddle up in bed and not think, talk, or plan. And herein lies the issue, I wouldn’t just be giving up The Office a few times a week, I’d be giving up that time with my partner, and we so desperately need that time together. And that’s another thing I need more of—more day dates, more date nights, more hand-holding, more sex. More, more, more.

I can scale back on social media. According to my Instagram—the only social media I spend time on—it says I use it an average of 38 minutes a day. That doesn’t sound like all that much considering community is important to me, considering that I need social media for my business, and considering how long it takes me to make a goddamn reel. Maybe I can post fewer stories, maybe I can check in with friends less, maybe I can spend less time reading poems from @poetryisnotaluxury, and maybe I can stop watching videos of Timothée Chalamet. I may only gain an hour or two a week, but maybe it’s worth a shot. Maybe.

Most of my time revolves around my son and I hate to think that in order to do everything else, I have to give up time with him. I don’t want a life with less of him. I want to do all the things and I want to do them all with him, not apart from him, not instead of him. 

I find myself rolling the word simplify around in my mouth, pressing my lips against the m and the p, still drawn to the concept, the intention, the ease.

Simplify: verb; a. to reduce to basic essentials; b. to diminish in scope or complexity (streamline); c. to make more intelligible (clarify).

Reduce. Diminish. Clarify.

But that’s just it. I don’t want to take anything away from my life. I just want to make it more simple, more streamlined, and less complex. Simpler.

Can’t I do that without taking everything away?

What is your word of the year?

If you haven’t given it much thought, some questions to ask yourself are: 

What could I use more of in my life? 

What could I use less of? 

By the end of the day, I want to feel _________.

If you’re open to sharing, please leave a comment. And of course, if you have any advice on how I can simplify my life, I am open to any and all of it.