22 Pieces of Advice from 2022

Annual tradition, new format.

Well, well, well. Here we are again. This is my sixth annual list of learnings, now in newsletter format — how exciting.

Obviously, the list grows year after year because of how numbers work, but by the time I’m done, each year feels emotionally bigger than the last, too. Maybe that’s also part of “getting older,” something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

I was a very different version of myself when I began making these lists. Since then, I have written 117 pieces of advice spanning some of the most defining moments of my life. As these lists change, and I change, and everything in the world changes, returning to this practice has been so grounding.

I’m so grateful to those of you who’ve followed along. I’m so touched that you’re here to read today, and I hope you love it as much as I loved writing it. Without further ado…

1

The secret to personal accountability is self-compassion. We tend to think it’s the opposite — that if you are understanding and forgiving toward yourself when you fall short, then you won’t ever have the motivation to improve. But what’s the alternative? Bullying yourself into being a better person? Good luck! From personal experience, it’s a lot harder to admit your failings to yourself when your own internal monologue is disdainful and unforgiving. And if you can’t admit it, how can you improve?

You are the only one who has to live in your mind all the time, and in case you need this reminder (as I often do), it should be a safe space to fail. You are allowed to forgive yourself, regroup, and try again.

Thank you to the therapists (yes, plural) who recommended this book.

2

I regret to inform you that if you have a very specific vision for your birthday party, you have to be the one to communicate it, plan it, and execute it. This is also about everything.

3

A shocking number of bad feelings can be soothed by having dinner with a friend in a pleasantly lit restaurant.

4

Your empathy for people who’ve hurt you should not come at the cost of admitting that hurt to yourself or articulating it fully to the people who love you.

And while we’re here: is it empathy? Or is it your attachment to being seen as a “good,” “fair,” or “self-aware” person who doesn’t “talk shit”? Or maybe, it’s the indignity of admitting how upset you are. Or maybe, it’s your paranoid fear that your friends will think you are the problem. Or maybe, it’s the fact that if you tell the whole truth out loud, there will be no going back, and that’s terrifying.

Please let all of that go and tell your truth. Your friends know that there are other sides to the story, but they care about yours. Besides, very good friends will tell you if they think you’re overlooking something.

5

Our culture glamorizes struggle and hustle to the point of absolute delusion. And by “our culture,” I mean me. I have a puritanical attachment to doing things the hard way and I would rather watch myself fail than entertain solutions that would make my success more likely.

Virtuous paths are difficult to walk, but that doesn’t mean that every difficult path in life is virtuous. It is okay to make your life easier. It is okay to “give in” to the concessions of our time and set yourself up for success.

This year, I bought myself a printer, for example.

behaving normally on twitter.

6

“But, who cares what I have to say?” “What if people don’t like it?” “What if I’m not good enough?” There is only one way to find out!

7

Early in my romantic life, I experienced a betrayal. I was hurt and humiliated and the enormity of my hurt feelings was only adding to the humiliation. Desperate to bury it all, I immediately started dating someone else and spent the following 10 years reducing the whole ordeal to a sardonic one-liner about bad breakups.

But I buried something else too, deep in my emotional code, and that was the belief that my best defense from being crushed like that again, was to expect the same betrayal from everyone. I guess it’s never too late to diagnose yourself with “trust issues.”

It turns out that replaying the pains of your past will not protect you from the pains of the future, which will happen anyway, still feel bad, and probably in a completely different way. The best we can do is trust that the pain we collect throughout life is ultimately making us more resilient. And that’s important because feeling hopeful takes resilience, but you deserve to hope for more than the wounds of your past.

Thank you, Tín Mai and Sophia June, who knew me way back then.

8

A larger point about the above: I could have saved myself some suffering as an adult if I had found compassion for the memory of my younger self, instead of continuing to feel embarrassed by her histrionics.

So much of getting older is realizing that the events of your youth hurt you more, or in different ways than you realized at the time. The echoes of old injuries are still ringing somewhere on the far edges of our psyches. It may take a while for the truth to travel back to you, but when you hear it, really listen.

9

You never love the same way twice.

10

An inexpensive gym membership you never use is actually a bigger waste of money than a more expensive gym membership you use often. When they said we’d use math every day in our adult lives, this is not what I imagined.

11

Liberate yourself from concern that you are annoying on social media. Of course you are, but people love you anyway. There, you’re free.

12

Being single is not a moral failing and it does not require an explanation.

13

It’s fine that you don’t love to work, and not just in the trendy way.

I came of working age in the golden era of the girl boss, and I performed a love of work as a means of survival and an earnest search for purpose and identity. It took me a while to let go of this act and set some boundaries because one of my most deeply held insecurities is that I’m lazy.

Go toward what feels good for you, even if it means confronting your insecurities. Actually, go toward what feels good for you especially if it means confronting your insecurities.

14

If you are waiting for someone to kiss you to decide whether or not you have chemistry, you don’t!

15

It is freeing to let go of things that no longer serve us. But sometimes the relief is followed by an eerie, untethered feeling. I don’t think we talk about that enough.

Trust the process and yourself. You’re still you, and while you may feel adrift in the adjustment period, you will settle into it soon enough.

16

Generally, try to assume that no one is upset with you unless they tell you that they are upset with you. This is so obvious. And yet!

17

Hold up your end of the deal and tell people when you are upset with them. Or don’t, but then that was your choice, baby!

18

Okay, fine: journaling is good.

19

Boundaries this, boundaries that — it’s all true! Saying “no” feels good, and so does standing up for yourself, and asking for what you need. But the biggest benefit, in my opinion, is that the more comfortable you get setting boundaries, the less personal it feels when people cross them (at least in the mid to low-stakes sense).

I used to feel so upset that no one respected feelings or needs I wasn’t communicating. Why wasn’t everyone thinking about the impact their actions had on me? But that wasn’t anyone else’s job, it was mine. Everyone else is thinking about their feelings and needs, which is their job.

This is all transactional, in a good way. We’re trading needs and desires, putting out bids and offers, accepting and declining as we go. We all get it wrong sometimes, at every scale, but the more you practice the easier it is to accept that.

20

There is so much horrible, grating, clueless, unrealistic, and frankly hostile dating advice out there. It is all completely relative, there is no approach that works for everyone, and we should each do whatever feels right.

But in case you were wondering, there is one piece of dating advice that genuinely changed my life and it’s this: Make a list of all the things you want in a partner and then go through it line by line and ask yourself, “is this a quality I need in another person, or is it something I wish that I was?” While you wait to meet the next person you’ll love beyond the logic of a list, take some of those line items off the pedestal and become more like the person you’re looking for.

This is how I became a person who travels alone, sends flowers, and behaves normally at the airport.

21

You really do become like the people you spend the most time with and finding your cheerleaders, truth-tellers, and “yes and”-ers is, in this woman’s opinion, what life is all about.

22

We always say, “life is short.” I prefer to believe that life is long — fragile and precious — but long. You have time for ambition, achievement, and sweat. There is also time for takeout, on the couch, in your lover’s lap; for making amends, and for one more dance.

We can’t do it all, and we’ll never get it perfect. But I believe that we have time to keep trying. What a gift.

xx