New year, same me
January 1 always brings about a focus on change, but what if I don't think I need to change?
There's a long-standing joke in my family that started with my Poppy and has found itself embedded in his eight kids and 17 grandkids. (He’s sadly no longer with us, but we’re all sure the as-of-now three great-grandkids will pick up this particular Poppy-ism once they’ve moved out of the goo-goo, gah-gah phase. One of them is even being raised trilingual, so he’ll probably be introduced to the line in Spanish and Italian, too.)
The joke goes like this:
Someone says, “I'm going to go change.”
And someone responds, “Don’t change too much, I kinda like you the way you are.”
That joke has made the rounds at the biennial Carroll Family vacations, the Carroll Family weddings, Thanksgiving and Christmas get-togethers — and, yes, even at Poppy’s memorial service. And it’s a pretty good representative of my mindset heading into 2023:
What if I don’t want to change because I kinda like myself the way I am?
I really don't mean for that to sound obnoxious.
It's actually taken me quite a while to get to this point. I'm really not sure I even liked myself up until a couple of years ago, let alone felt confident enough to say I didn’t need to change much. I was constantly wanting to be something, someone else, and I'd try to contort myself into filling a different role. Turns out, though, I’m not as flexible as I thought. Why would I just want to be Shannon Leigh Carroll when being anyone else seemed like it would be light-years better.
I mean, in high school, I was the nerdy academic in a group of the popular girls who were having the stereotypical teenage experience I so desperately craved. I was the angel who never had a curfew because her parents trusted her that much. I was the horseback rider who was up at 5 a.m. on weekends (and on Wednesdays, when my school started an hour late) to get out to the barn for her lessons. I was the normal-size girl who’d been conditioned to think she was fat and let that convince her she was somehow undeserving of fun and attention. I was the college freshman inside watching tennis at a frat party while others were outside smoking weed, because I was taught to never ever EVER do drugs. (I can’t say I regret that last one, though, because the 2012 Australian Open Final was maybe the best tennis match I’ve ever seen, even if Rafa Nadal lost.) I was everything I’d been raised to think I should be (and I’m sure was as annoying as I no doubt sound), but I so desperately wanted to be the girl at the other end of the spectrum: the wild child who did stupid things and had fun doing them.
I just never knew how to be her.
That meant every year’s resolutions then looked similar: go out more, make more friends, lose weight — you get the picture. I was stuck in a miserable cycle of deciding every year that I needed to change two or four or a hundred things about myself, because then and only then would my whole life be better. Spoiler alert: Nothing ever changed like I thought it would.
But now I understand myself a whole heck of a lot better, and I'm pretty OK these days with who I am. I'm not the party child; I'm the mom friend who sends people flowers and bakes them cakes just because I want to. I'm not the endlessly cool girl who can put on things that don’t match and make it look better than anything I could do with my closet; I'm the girl who likes colorful, quirky pieces and takes 25 minutes to very carefully put together an outfit. I'm a nerd who collects books and hoards them like a dragon. I like to have random dance parties to k-pop music. I’m an Aquarius sun, Aries moon, Scorpio rising — and while I know next-to-nothing about the Zodiac, a friend of my sister’s who does says that means I’m “intense.”
There are goals I have for this year, to be sure. Some are realistic (start writing more, see: here; pick up some useful skill such as sewing or knitting or crocheting; move to the East Coast), and some are unrealistic (win the lottery and buy a small English cottage with a rose garden my mom and I can design together), but I'm not focused on changing myself. I just don’t think I need to. And I really don’t want to. I want to continue to be a kind person and a good friend. I want to continue to prioritize being happy and healthy. I want to eat lots of chocolate, go to lots of concerts, make all my friends read all my favorite books.
I want to be… me.
And I think that would make Poppy very, very proud.
Final Thoughts:
On what I’m reading: I just finished the Mindf*ck Series by S.T. Abby (what a pen name), and while it’s not the best literature I’ve ever read, I inhaled the five books and haven’t been able to get them out of my head. Lana Myers (the main character) is an icon — she’s a serial killer going after the men who seriously wronged her… while she’s dating the FBI profiler tasked with catching her. I’m obsessed. I’m also still working on “The Starless Sea,” and if I could live in the vibes of a book, it might be this one.
On what I’m watching: I finally got around to watching both “When Harry Met Sally” (yes, Billy Crystal’s sweaters are as good as everyone says) and “Severance” (omg, that ending), and I’m now mad at myself for being so late to both.
On what I’m listening to: I think I’ve listened to “Doomsday” by Lizzy McAlpine around 800 times in the last three days, I can’t get “Ditto” by NewJeans out of my head, and “Arabella” by the Arctic Monkeys is always a favorite.
I need the English Premier League to end… yesterday. As an Arsenal fan, I have too much anxiety from being at the top of the table. I’m used to fighting for fourth and a Champions League spot, not freaking out about what Manchester City is doing. I don’t like it!!!
The Steelers didn’t make the playoffs, and I… didn’t really even care. Mike Tomlin still doesn’t have a losing season in his 16 years as our head coach, and my team sacked Deshaun Watson seven painful times. That makes me happy.
What Mikaela Shiffrin is doing in Alpine skiing right now is absolutely insane. I really and truly don’t think there’s a more dominant athlete in the world right now. She’s won a third of her races in her career, and has won six of the last seven. She’s four wins away from tying the record (86) for most World Cup wins — man or woman. Can you say: GOAT?
I’m getting ready for a big move out to D.C., so if anyone has any recommendations for anything at all, send them my way!