Happiness in 2023

Hey y’all,

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve taken some time off from writing over the last few weeks to quietly contemplate the last year. My expectations aren’t high for 2023 given what the early 2020s have given us so far, so I am walking into this new year with the requisite ecclesiastical fear and trembling - but I am also holding out hope that the year brings the kind of happiness you hear about in songs. I want a happiness that inspires storytelling and music and love. I want to feel it, not fleetingly, but deeply and metaphysically.

Now, in the pantheon of New Year’s resolutions, happiness certainly isn’t novel, but it remains so elusive to me and most of my Uber-successful millennial sistren that it feels like an illusion.

But how could this be?

To the observant and perhaps covetous outsider, it looks like “I’ve made it” by most traditional measures. I’m married, well-travelled and am making moves professionally. How could I possibly be unhappy with so much richesse?

To me, that’s fairly reductive but also fair. Perhaps it’s worthy of further inspection some other time …

For now, suffice it to say that for me, happiness isn’t about material success. But I guess that’s part of my issue is that I can’t really articulate what happiness is.

I do know happiness when I see it, however. I have it with my husband - a person without whom I could not survive. I see it when he wakes up and gives me a gigantic hug in the morning. I feel it when my God-son sees me after too many days gone by and runs to me as if I were the shiniest toy in the store. I feel it when I hear how my sister has been bragging about me to her friends.

I guess what I’m saying is that I want 2023 to be full of these kinds of moments and feelings for me and for you. All other resolutions be damned … I wish for happiness … for me and for you.

Happy New Year,

The Trendy One