from chaos to calendar

For most of December, I was gearing up to write a post similar to the one I wrote last January: New Year’s Resolutions I’d like to make for other people. (Translation: A list of annoying habits I wish they’d quit.) This year, though, I found myself coming up short. The only subject that stood out to me? Encores. There was probably a time not that long ago (maybe the 80’s?) when an encore was a surprising and delightful turn of events. Now, encores are an expected part of the live music ritual. The concert ends, the artists leave the stage and then return triumphantly a few minutes later to do two or three songs – often the songs you showed up to hear. I think we are over it. Just do the setlist and say goodbye when you are done. Let 2025 be the end to the encore.

Since I did not have a plethora of resolutions for other people this year (lucky for my son, husband, and parents), I’ve decided to focus on just one for myself: structure. I have been working towards this resolution for two years, since we spent our first fall living in New York City. So, here it is—my January 2025 resolution: to finally create and stick to a structured weekly schedule.

You might be wondering what a lack of structure actually looks like. In my world, it looks like sleeping in most mornings—unless I had a tennis game at 9 a.m. (which, let’s be honest, felt early). My most reliable “appointments” were a daily Wordle, Mini, and Connections (in that order) and a bridge lesson that occasionally popped up on Wednesdays—except in the summer, because apparently, bridge takes seasonal breaks. Beyond that, things were…flexible. Hair appointments happened every three weeks, though never on the same day or time (because consistency is so last season). Tennis? Anywhere from one to five days a week, with different people, at various locations, at completely unpredictable times. Pickleball followed the same chaotic pattern. And my blogs? They were written and posted randomly when topics and ideas would strike me. Looking at this now, I can see how scattered it all sounds.

Fall of 2022, we spent three months in an apartment in the West Village and had a very set schedule. My husband and I would walk the dog first thing every morning from our apartment to the West Side Highway and back. After the walk, Monday and Friday mornings. we would workout at Barry’s in Chelsea and Tuesdays and Thursdays, we would workout at LIftonic in the Meatpacking district. On Wednesdays, I would take the train to Roosevelt Island for a tennis clinic and then have lunch with my friend Adrienne near her office on the Upper East Side. On Sundays, we would play pickleball in the morning, do hot yoga in the early evening and then go to the grocery store. This amount of structure enabled me to feel more organized, energized and focused. Because I was writing my blog once a week, it also gave me time on my own in the afternoons to write, edit and post. 

That fall in New York City was the first time in 23 years, since becoming a parent that my schedule was entirely my own. When you’re raising kids, you schedule around naps, school drop off and pick up, after school sports, school holidays and summer break. For most of their childhoods, I taught part-time at a community college, ensuring the week was very structured.

While my needs were not my top priority, I would get a productivity high off of fitting in as much as possible while my kids were in school. That sense of accomplishment, the thrill of writing a to-do list and checking it off, kept me moving. It wasn’t just about getting things done; it was my way of quieting the unspoken anxieties I had about feeling stagnant or somewhat irrelevant as an adult.

Upon returning home in December 2022, I wrote multiple notes to myself about ways I could recreate the structure I found in NYC back in my Northern California. Unfortunately the following excuses killed this momentum: First, my husband was back to working on California hours so he was not free to workout with me in the morning. Second, the dog no longer required a walk since we could let her out in the backyard in the morning. Third, and most important, I realized that creating a schedule would mean that I would no longer have the freedom to say yes to invitations for tennis, socializing and fun that might come up. In retrospect and after struggling with this for two years, I realize that I forgot how to make myself a priority. So, the structure that made me so happy in New York did not follow me  back to California – not in 2023 or 2024.

While we were living in London last fall, I scheduled lots of tours, restaurant reservations and plans with friends who were visiting us. Very soon after we arrived and started following through on those plans, I found out that dates and times were not always on the calendar correctly or, even more disturbing, were recorded correctly but I did not double check the day/time/place and managed to screw things up. For our tour of the English Parliament, we arrived an hour late. For our dinner with friends visiting from New York at Gold in Notting Hill, we showed up two hours early. We went to play bridge at a London bridge club and, once again, we were more than 30 mins late. Even this week, we were meeting friends in San Francisco for a food tour and I had the correct start time on my calendar and a reminder in a text, and I was off on the start time by an hour. We had to race out of the house in a panic and my husband looked both annoyed and eager to point out my pattern for screwing up time and place. I thought to myself, “I have to own that this is not an isolated experience. I need to make some changes today.” It is possible that I used to be really good at remembering times, dates and places without needing to check the calendar but that moment has definitely passed. I need to go back and reread Atomic Habits, commit to being more mindful of my comparative weakness and make double checking the calendar part of my daily routine.

With all of this reflection, I needed some action. Luckily, my close friend and tennis partner had an amazing idea to hire her talented daughter to help me update, expand and comprehensively upgrade this blog. This remarkable woman in her early 20’s has exactly all of the talents I lack and desperately need to take on this project and actually see it through. And, now my schedule finally has an anchor! It’s astonishing how having to be accountable to someone besides myself has changed my outlook completely. I am inspired and motivated, ready to prioritize and commit. When you see the new site, complete with my name, logo, updated template and organization, please know that (a) this new year’s resolution is absolutely happening and (b) I finally found a way to prioritize my own project for the first time in many, many years.