New Year, New Loves

Sweet readers, the first week of 2023 has somehow already kicked my ass? I was lucky to off between Christmas and New Year’s without taking PTO for the first time EVER, but I had a bad cold for the first time in at least 2.5 years that kept me on the couch for most of last week.

Somehow (as always) the short week time warp got me immediately, and I’ve been struggle-bussing it for the last four days. Here’s hoping the fog clears after this weekend and I can finally remember what I was working on last year… In the meantime, here are a few goodies to hopefully help you clear the cobwebs and stroll leisurely into 2023, at a pace that works for you and your life.

Goals > Resolutions

All year, every year

Y’all know I love a new year, a clean slate, a fresh calendar, but I’m also really digging the resolution discourse this year. Just as I’ve been getting calendars for Christmas for as long as I can remember, I’ve also been making New Year’s resolutions just as long. And growing up in the 90's hellish diet culture landscape, my top resolution was almost always "lose weight" (yep, even in grade school). This lasted long into my young adulthood too, until I figured out that:

• Consistency is one of the biggest challenges I’ve had over my entire life, and
• Extreme over-correction is how I try to make up for my failings at consistency, which means that
• I almost always just make things worse than before, which never ends well for "lose weight".

I eventually realized I’m more of a goal person who does better better with smaller chunks, so every January I basically just make a To Do List that can be broken out by quarter, month, and even week. Sure, I have the standard “move more” and “eat less sugar” boilerplate resolutions, which are all well and good, but personally I need more specificity and structure if I want to actually accomplish anything. It's boring and basic, I know, but this level of detail gets me further than setting myself up to fail every year with a list of vague items. Bonus: I get the elusive, dopamine-driven satisfaction of checking something off towards a goal multiple times a week.

But truly, the best approach is to do what works best for you, and for a lot of folks, that might mean no resolutions at all! I’m absolutely a fan of this trend, but I came to terms long ago with the fact that I'll probably be writing To Do lists of some sort until my dying breath.

2023 Is a Chariot Year

And it's time to take the reins, my babes

Not to get too woo-woo on you, but I’m a tarot enthusiast, and I’m pretty pumped that 2023 is a Chariot Year. This is calculated by adding the year's numbers together and reducing to a single digit, which aligns to the archetype on its corresponding card. The Chariot doesn’t get a lot of play in popular media (it’s always Death, The Tower, Three of Swords, and occasionally The Lovers), but it’s one of my favorite cards in the Major Arcana.

The Chariot is all about forward motion, propelling yourself forward towards a destination with intention and purpose. Tonight is the first full moon of the calendar year and the Chariot corresponds with the Moon astrologically, which is also in Cancer, the sign of both the moon itself AND the Chariot, so here's hoping everything lines up nicely a few days of new year fogginess. I love Meg Jones-Wall’s write up of the Chariot Year at Autostraddle (all of her writing is great), and Sarah Gottesdiener has this powerful write up, from the 2023 Many Moons planner:

The Chariot is an illustration of the success that comes from knowing our strengths and knowing which resources and tools to use…The tools do not use us, because we created them. All spirituality is made up by humans, and as we grow, our practices must as well.

Focus your intention, will, energy, emotions, and actions on the same plane, united. Now, keep this focus while in movement. Keep moving forward while staying aligned, even through disruptions, distractions, and all kinds of derailments.

This is the year to go beyond your comfort zone. Go beyond what you think is possible for yourself. Go beyond societal rules about what you “should” do. Go beyond superficial criticisms and actually do something about the issues. The more you follow your intuition, the better. The Charioteer packs light and knows which way to go.

Basically, find the road you want to be on, the vessel that will get you there most efficiently, and allow yourself be propelled by something deeper than The Same Shit You’ve Always Done. Which is obviously good advice every year, but you might get a little extra boost from the Universe this time around.

Todd Fields' Cate Blanchett's Tàr

Believe all the hype (and then some)

When we sat down to watch Tàr, Todd Fields’ transcendent new film written for Cate Blanchett, my spouse balked at its 2.5+ hrs run time. “You can start it,” he said (he’s staunchly Team 90-Minutes or Less), “but I might go back to Cyberpunk.” So I started it, personally undaunted by run time (I'm a Bollywood fan, c’mon), and neither of us could look away for the entire duration. Yes, it really is THAT good, and Cate Blanchett really is THAT incredible as a globally-celebrated lesbian orchestra conductor Lydia Tàr, who also happens to be an egotistical, pretentious, abusive shithead.

That’s it, that’s the movie, and it is FLAWLESS. Every detail is considered, every element is as bespoke as Tàr’s German-engineered suits (seriously, I want her  entire wardrobe), and Fields manages to make a dry New Yorker interview and a tense Julliard conducting master class absolutely fascinating even if you know nothing about classical music. My spouse scoffed multiple times, “I’m not smart enough to watch this movie!" yet stayed put, in thrall to Blanchett’s intensity and magnetism just as much as I was.

He held off on Cyberpunk that night, both of us quietoly thrilled by what could have been a very dull movie if not for the stellar craftsmanship on every level. I will say that the ending was mostly meh for me, but it didn’t matter  by then—Tàr is one of the best movies, and the most iconic performance, I’ve seen in a long, long time; I have to resist the urge to watch it obsessively again and again.

Fleishman is In Trouble (the series)

All the cringe Elder Millennial feels

Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s novel Fleishman is in Trouble has been on my TBR since  2019, and when I heard it was getting the series treatment, I was disappointed but secretly kind of glad to watch it totally fresh. The FX limited series with Jesse Eisenberg, Lizzy Kaplan, and Claire Danes starts out slowly and somewhat predictably (Divorced Dad Angst! Satire of Dating Apps! Hilary signs in 2016!) but the tone shifts in the last few episodes becomes less about nebbishy NYC nephrologist Dr. Toby Fleishman (Eisenberg) and more about the two women in his life: his college friend and our narrator Libby, an unfulfilled magazine writer turned suburban SAHM and backyard hammock vaper (Kaplan), and his recent ex, the former Mrs. Rachel Fleishman. Claire Danes gives a frighteningly good and emotionally harrowing performance in the penultimate 7th episode, "Me Time," one of the finest episodes I’ve watched since Barry S2E5 "ronny/lily" or Atlanta's "Teddy Perkins" (S2E6).

Fleishman the Show hit me unexpectedly in several many feels: nostalgia for both the early Aughts and early 2016, mental health coping mechanism, class disparities, life choices as an (alleged) adult, the absolute treasure of long-term close friendships. It's an extremely Elder Millennial story of knowing you’re not living up to your potential, doing what you were told to do and still feeling unsuccessful, and somehow finding your footing no matter how unstable you feel. I’m actually glad I hadn't read the book going into it, but it’s now top of my list to read next.

Matrix by Lauren Groff

Medieval nuns in ecstacy

Rounding out our trifecta of spiky 2022 anti-heroines, we have Lauren Groff’s masterful 2021 novel Matrix, a poetic and deeply sensual account inspired by Marie de France, a relative of Eleanor d’Aquitane and fierce Abbess of a floundering nunnery who receives visions from the Virgin that guide her and her flock of misfits. It’s historical fiction, yes, but this is some next-level historical fiction, par for the course for Groff. It’s so gorgeously written, so intentional in its passion, that it almost makes me want to quit trying to write fiction (Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye had the same effect).

I’m not quitting, at least not until I finish a complete draft of the novel I’ve been working on for four years now, because Matrix makes me want to be a writer on that level, the upper echelon of novels that find balance between literary craft and effective storytelling. I can’t even count how many passages I marked to tuck away for inspiration, but Groff's details of Marie's visions are simply stunning:

First they showed me that the war so often vaunted between them was a falsity created by the serpent to sow division and strife and unhappiness in the world. For, I saw, it was from Eve‘s taste of the forbidden fruit that knowledge came, and with knowledge the ability to understand the perfection of the fruit of Mary’s womb and the gift given to the world. And without the flaw of Eve there could be no purity of Mary. And without the womb of Eve, which is the House of Death, there could be no womb of Mary, which is the House of Life. Without the first matrix, there could be no salvatrix, the greatest matrix of all.

BRB, SWOONING... 🤤

In Love & Saltiness

• 🌾 Are people coming back around on carbs? I hope so, because I need rice and beans in my life at the very least. Fun fact: the brain needs carbs to function properly!
• 🤯 Millennials are officially the first generation to NOT get more conservative as we age. As any of us will tell you, no shit. We’re also now the largest age group in the US, so I find it somewhat hilarious that this news comes as some kind of major revelation.
• 💄 Babes, most celebrity beauty brands suck (except Fenty and Haus Labs). Jezebel has a fantastic piece up about how even the celebs don’t actually use the products, and don’t even want a beauty brand–it’s all a cash grab. Parasocial relationships and the evolving entertainment industry is forcing celebs to diversify, for better or worse (j/k it’s definitely worse). I’m just over here patiently waiting for Rihanna to drop that new music she’s (allegedly) been working on for the past decade.

All right, that's all for this late-breaking New Year edition of The Enthusiast! Thank you for reading and if you're not a subscriber, you should most definitely sign up (it's free!). Make sure you confirm via the email link to start receiving the newsletter every week. And if you've been enjoying this newsletter, forward it along to a friend and spread the love!

Until next week, figure out how to make new friends as an adult then mix your groups if you're feeling spicy, be glad that "Influencer" might not be the ideal "job" after all, and learn more about about this prolific Kentuckian inventor who also happened to be the son of slaves:

Foggily yours,
LKH