Resolution
I’ve never been great about new year resolutions, but as I (slowly) enter a new era of life post-school I’m hoping to more thoughtfully explore, proactively engage, and reenergize in writing.
I loved to write when I was little. Not unlike other little girls, I treasured a journal in a drawer in my desk. My writings, however, didn’t manifest in songs about crushes and stories. My black leather Moleskine’d thoughts were journalistic and bulleted, a little introspective. Perhaps self-important. For me, my creativity manifested in the performing arts: singing on Tuesdays, class plays on Fridays, chamber choir, musical theater. When I started college at Harvard, I turned a class paper on film noir movies into an analysis on female hysteria in 19th c. America. Soon after, I declared History as my concentration and didn’t look back.
I went off to study all-things material and historical culture. In reality, my academic exploration into the world of 19th c. consumer-hood had always, at a certain angle, reflected the way we consume today. Semesters spent studying quilts & quiltmaking led me to Questlove’s 2022 Met Gala outfit from Gee’s Bend, studying early advice books led me to those red hardbound books in my childhood home bookshelf (and what it means to be a girl?).
Then, the pandemic-craze of trading cards led me to its earliest form: 19th c. trade cards, advertising at the forefront of colored lithography, elaborately-illustrated pieces of card stock tucked into a purchase, scribbled-on-the-back with arithmetic, collected material by children, traded (I went on to write a thesis including the economics of children’s collecting habits), and cut up into scrap books.
That very thesis inspired my “career.” I declared I was passionate about the business of commerce and culture, reneging on a more traditional path I saw my friends slot into, chasing after the opportunity to invest in the people, communities, corner of the internet that kept me reading… and writing.
After 119 pages on brightly illustrated cards, I stopped writing. I was most probably burnt out but prefer to think I was filling my dotted pages (dot grid is superior) in other ways: conversations with friends by Anderson Memorial Bridge (the under-appreciated bridge by Charles River), over bowls of good soup, FaceTiming my parents, people watching.
To a new year’s resolution written out loud: in declaration, in conversation, in clarity. Writing now, somewhere near Freytag's denouement, feels less like tying loose ends and a lot more like untangling the knots I once saw as little girl bows.