Here’s to a Year of Abundance
Assessing My No-Buy Year and Looking Ahead
I have a love-hate relationship with new years’ resolutions. I love the idea of them because the new year represents a renewal, a wringing out of the old and a ringing in of the new. And there’s a sense of possibility with the launch of a calendar year. What I don’t love about near years’ resolutions is that invariably they get lost in the mix of the year ahead. I have honestly never followed through with a new years’ resolution and, thus resist making them—sometimes unsuccessfully because the draw of renewal has so much appeal.
Last year was probably the best year for resolutions, though. As many of you recall, 2023 was our No-Buy Year. I’m going to admit now, I did not make it through the holiday season in No-Buy Year mode. I made it pretty far into the year without purchasing too much. That is to say, I did purchase things, probably more than I needed. But I purchased fewer things than I would’ve if I didn’t make the commitment to consume less. I was more mindful of impulsive decisions and, as I wrote in my mid-year check-in, I developed a more sensible relationship with clothing purchases and have come to a point where around 80-90% of my clothing purchases are second-hand and/or consignment. Alas, around November, there was a serious decline in will power–thank you season of buying-shit-we-don’t-need. In the end, I give myself a C+ in the No-Buy Year realm. Still passing, but with a lot of room for improvement.
In 2024, I don’t intend to continue the strict “no-buy” approach. Partly because it just didn’t work completely for me. I will continue to be mindful about how I use my money, but I also realized that in addition to switching gears from impulse purchases, there’s a deeper need to reframe my mindset around abundance. Abundance not just being an accumulation of things. Rather, abundance being an existential state of being.
I’ve been thinking of abundance since I talked with the fabulous Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor, for a forthcoming story I wrote for Romper about babysitting co-ops (stay tuned). We spoke about the feeling that comes from becoming a part of a community of families and she said this:
“It's a feeling of satisfaction. It's a feeling of being wanted. It's a feeling of being needed. It's a feeling of like I have much to give and much to provide. It's a feeling of abundance.”
Since then, I’ve recognized this existential sense of abundance so much in my life. While the word “abundance” means, per Mirriam-Webster, “an ample quantity,” the word feels less of an accumulation of wealth to me, particularly in this context. When Angela said it, the idea of abundance gave me the feeling of a warm hug. It made me think of all the people I love. It conjured up a sense of coziness of lively and easy chatter amongst a tight-knit group of people or the awe of standing in a field full of colorful wildflowers.
And so for 2024, I’m setting out to explore what that existential, spiritual idea of abundance means to me.
The question you might be having is: what does that actually look like? The truth is, I don’t know exactly. So it’s a bit hard to track goals-wise which is, perhaps, just fine since I don’t meet my annual goals as it is. But here are the overall themes I think I’ll be focusing on.
The Abundance of Community
Community has always been extremely important to me. In every place that I’ve lived, that’s what I searched for. Whenever I felt discontent with a place, it was because of lack of community. What I mean by “community” is not just a disparate smattering of friends in one place. What I mean is a group of people that is interconnected and interdependent in some way. They’re people who you can rely on in a pinch. They’re a connection that goes beyond occasional hangs and moves more into the mutual care realm.
Not to brag <she says with a satisfied look on her face>, I’ve done an exceptionally good job at building community. It’s what I’d call my superpower. It’s what I believe will make me valuable in an apocalypse scenario–at least that’s what I tell my husband when he jokes that I don’t have any of the skills to get us through a zombie invasion. Joking aside, though, it really is an important role. And I believe everyone deeply wants community, but not everyone is capable of initiating or creating that. Our individualized society doesn’t make it easy and if you’re an introvert or have a hard time meeting new people, finding community can feel like a gargantuan hurdle.
What like to do this year is embrace my role as that connector and community-builder. I need to lean into it which I’ve sometimes resisted because it can also mean a whole lot of emotional labor. I’m very good at taking on more emotional labor than I should sometimes, but there are times when I need to recognize the role as essential to both myself and others. For example, I’ve been leading an accountability/reflection group of antiracist parents for the past couple years and I’ve tried very hard to get someone else on board to lead the charge. But then one day when we were talking about a kind of transition, one of the members said “Elizabeth, you’re just really good at this, we’ve also just assumed it’s your role.” What I need to do is accept that role and know that that’s where I’m supposed to be. I don’t envision I’ll carry on that way forever, but for now I have the space for it and I want and need that group as much as the participants do. In that case, I feel meant to continue in this role.
Here’s an abundance of community in 2024!
The Abundance of Creativity
Back in November I participated in a 30-day Dress Challenge where I wore the same Wool& dress for a full month. Along with wearing the same dress every day, I took it as an added challenge to mix up the looks. It wasn’t something I did super consciously, I just didn’t want to look like I was wearing the same thing every day (to whom, other that myself, that mattered is unknown since very few people who would care see me every day) and started mixing it up and eventually it became intentional.
What I realized that despite being limited to that one turquoise dress and the current contents of my closet, I was able to put together more or less different outfits almost every day of the challenge. And I barely made a dent in what I already own. What this made me realize is that even though I feel this desire to accumulate more clothing, it’s not a lack of clothes that I have, it’s a lack of creativity.
This tracks so well with this whole project because I think that’s something that we all suffer from in a capitalistic society that has imposed this mindset around scarcity. You know that feeling when the targeted ad comes at you through Instagram and makes you think, Oh, I think I need that jacket because I don’t have that specific one for that specific purpose <even though there are several jackets already hanging in my closet>. And because we live with so many of those types of messages of scarcity, it’s hard to even recognize when it’s even happening. For me, to create circumstances that made me notice this, I needed some kind of jolt. The 30-day challenge was that jolt and it resulted in a deeper store of creativity than I knew I had.
How I want to bring this sense of creativity in is twofold. First, it’s doing more of these kind of challenges. In fact, yesterday I started another Wool& challenge, this time for 100 days(!). The second is that I am going to branch out of my creative outlets more. For that, I started yet another challenge yesterday which is a 30-Day Drawing Challenge with Wendy MacNaughton. What I hope is that engaging in a medium that comes less naturally to me than writing will help my general creativity—but really my writing creativity—bloom. It’s been a struggle writing anything for the book lately and I just think I need a jolt of inspiration from a different part of my brain.
Here’s to an abundance of creativity for 2024.
The Abundance of Positive Climate Action
And finally, bringing it back to climate action and climate justice, I want to focus even more acutely on the abundance of climate solutions. This doesn’t mean that we must ignore the climate disasters already happening, rather it’s keeping our minds on what is possible.
I don’t think that means I’m going to stop reading climate or apocalypse fiction, but I do want to do a deeper dive into the positive possibilities. That is why I’m so excited for Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s book What if We Get it Right?: Visions of Climate Futures. Her announcement of the book introduced me to the whole idea of “climate futurism.” I suppose that’s what I’ve already been working on, but now it has a name. As such, I want more of this in my life. It’s what I want my book to be. I want to deeply envision a better future in all ways and that is what I want to lean into for 2024.
Here’s to an abundance of climate solutions in 2024!
What does abundance mean to you? Do you do new years’ resolutions? What are yours? What are you hoping for in 2024?