I hope everyone had a nice Christmas. Time with family; enjoying Christmas pudding; watching Bufflehead; visiting the cemetery; or not celebrating. Christmas is different for us all.
At 2023’s end I read ’s A year of change and began writing this. Much changes in a year, but some things don’t. Most of what I wanted for 2024 applies to 2025. Meaningful change takes time.
In her essay, Gannon explained a Goodbye Hello journal.
You list out all the things you want to say goodbye to this year—and all the things you want to welcome into the New Year.
When I read that entering 2024 I wanted to take inventory, say goodbye to some things and hello to others. I’m repeating this for 2025.
Gannon wrote:
The last year felt blurry and hazy, like driving through a thick snowy storm.
True of my 2022; most of 2023; less of 2024; hopefully even less going forward.
I am only just back to feeling myself again.
In 2022 I sustained a traumatic brain injury so wasn’t “myself” for a long time. Brain injuries don’t go away.1 TBI is a chronic condition. I’ll never be who I was, but started feeling generally “myself” toward the end of 2023.
Since my injury I’ve been focused on getting better—healing while improving as a person. Things in need of betterment were exacerbated.
2022 was the injury’s year. It overshadowed everything. 2023 it still overshadowed most things and I turned 30. People say I’m young—31 now, time goes one direction—but I don’t have years to spare. My brain commandeered important ones.
To reframe this positively, I see it this way: I was comfortable. This demolished comfort before it became complacency. Much of what made me comfortable was lost or became irrelevant. 2024 was about starting new, moving forward, and changing—positivity, kindness, spending time with people.
You can’t know a person’s story from looking at them. Everybody’s been or is going through through something. You have no idea.
My personal writing is defined by needing to care less what others think. Writing about myself—not sparrows, not woodpeckers—is an exercise in not caring.
First I thought: People subscribe for birds! Personal essays have too many sentences starting with “I.”
Now I think: I can write whatever I want. My personal writing gets as much if not more engagement than my writing about birds.
If you’re worried what others might think of you, remember they likely won’t. I want to keep saying goodbye to preoccupation with others’ opinions. Though not gone, it has considerably waned—it’s lingering in the doorway, but leaving.
David Foster Wallace provides a helpful mantra: “You'll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do.”
I also need to keep saying goodbye to hypercriticism of myself. “I’m hard on myself. People notice.” In my head, self-criticism was motivation—but it brought despondency and shame. Everything can be trained, including self-compassion.
I’ve always been anxious. Birds help, but life isn’t always spent among Red Crossbills, American Tree Sparrows, or Prairie Warblers. After TBI I was warned my anxiety would worsen. It did and already wasn’t great. After years of convincing myself I didn’t need medication, I realized I did so sought and started it. I wasn’t pharmacophobic, but was Bartleby when it came to medication: I’d prefer not to.
When something makes me anxious I believe the best way to lessen anxiety is make myself try doing the thing and get through it until anxiety lessens and eventually subsides. Not perfect, and definitely not always pleasant, but it works for me.
My TBI happened when I was making a left turn at a bad intersection. Once I returned to driving, I became anxious about lefts at intersections. Certain intersections I’d avoid altogether, taking the long way for fewer lefts. That wasn’t sustainable. Eventually I forced myself to make lefts until I didn’t think twice anymore. Exposure therapy makes sense to me. Expose yourself to “fears…things, situations and/or activities” until they don’t bother you.
Shame is also something I’ll continue working to quash. Gannon discussed shame in an interview.
I was going through disbelief, then shame, then shock, all the stages of grief…We outgrow ourselves, and then we have to say goodbye to them…I've stepped into this 2.0 version of myself, which is amazing.
Part of saying goodbye/hello is deciding what to let die. I wouldn’t call who I am a 2.0 version yet, but I’m not the same I was a year ago, and I wrote that last year too. Change compounds. I’m outgrowing 1.0, not fully formed. Sometimes I wonder if we ever are.
I never liked change. Now I welcome it.
writes, “I am willing to see that I can evolve and change the aspects of myself that I am not happy about. Change is always good.” Doesn’t mean it’s easy, quick, or pleasant—but good.
Think of yourself at a given moment. All your life leading to it you were developing into that self—outgrowing a series of selves. The self of that moment is the culmination of all preceding selves, but also just another fleeting self in a series leading to a later moment.
At any time, we feel we are a destination, a self we’ve arrived at. What feels like a destination is a stop on a larger route. We are the route, not the stops along the way.
Change can be uncomfortable, but the net gain is worth it. “The more we resist change, the more we suffer,” Gannon says; “yes, I like change. Not massive change, not a rug pulled from under you, but small constant change.”
It’s difficult when a rug is pulled. Maybe you thought the rug really tied the room together and couldn’t imagine the room without it, but you might eventually be glad it’s gone. The room is your life, the rug is whatever you want. A job, a partner, anything. Grieve, but acquaint yourself with what is—no more rug—not what was.
2024 is over. Going into it I wrote:
I’m welcoming a big year, so more birds. Birds mean a lot to me.
I saw lots of birds in 2024. Like Jim Harrison, I’m keeping the total to myself.2
Until recently I considered 2021 the best year of my life. Depressed that my best year was behind me, I wanted to make the current year always feel like the best. For many reasons, not just birds, 2024 was better than 2021.
Another goal entering 2024 was to be less reliant on solitude. This year I spent time with people—familiar and new. It’s energizing to listen, learn, have conversations.
Goals for 2025 are in motion. I mean that in ways I won’t write about, but also in ways I just did. Change I wanted for 2024 is still in motion. Brené Brown writes, “meaningful change is a process.” It takes time.
Meaningful changes are often linked. Self-criticism can be a defense mechanism against others’ imagined negative opinions; if you care less about the latter, there’s less reason for the former. Self-criticism is linked also to anxiety. If you aren’t overly hard on yourself it provides less to worry about.
The root of many things, most changes I’m working on, is in how you treat yourself. To invoke Brown again: “Talk to yourself like someone you love.”
We can always improve and should want to. Self-help is laughed at, but there’s a desire for self-improvement—a name I prefer to self-help. “Self-help” has been sullied by those who’d rather dismiss it than grow.
Anything worthwhile takes time and patience. Be kind, listen. When you’re frustrated, you can probably rectify frustration through change. It’s rarely immediate or effortless, but can be the solution.
Be happy, forgiving, compassionate—with others and with yourself. Learn to reframe for positivity. Take inventory of your life and self, determine what doesn’t serve you, and bid it farewell. Find what to replace it with and greet it.
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I’ve been adamant my TBI won’t define me. For not letting it define me, I don’t seem to mind writing about it. It doesn’t define me, but what is to be gained by holding this in? It’s hard to get a TBI and not have it become a defining element of yourself. It doesn’t entirely define me, but I’ve come to terms with it.
“the sum total is precise and astonishing, my only secret.” - Jim Harrison, “Counting Birds.”
David Foster Wallace was an exceptional writer and observer of human nature. In the end, it is ourselves that we have to live with. And to find comfort with ourselves and out in the natural world.
What an excellent, sincere and thoughtful post. With ridiculously good photos that break up and give meter to your thoughts. Thank you. And I hope 2025 moves in the right directions for you.