There’s this lovely newsletter called The Moon Lists that arrives in my inbox sporadically, always just when I need it.It’s a list of prompts, topics for journaling, ideas for reconsidering how you’re living or not living.
One prompt from a recent dispatch: “PHANTOM LIMB: Name something you miss but — if offered — you don’t actually want back.” A curious provocation! Missing without longing, a new way of considering the things and people and ideas we leave behind.People have taken in recent years to posting “More/Less” lists and “In/Out” lists on social media at the end of the year, itemized declarations of things they’re going to embrace and eschew in the coming months.Take inventory: What stays, what goes? The Moon Lists’ version of this is “Away/Toward” lists, and for the past couple of years I’ve loved filling these out.
What am I moving away from (gorgeous but sad acoustic folk music that inevitably leaves me feeling depressed; diseased houseplants) and what am I moving toward (lowering the stakes; abbondanza!).The problem so often with these lists is that you fill them out and then you forget them.
You set intentions and then you get back to going about things unintentionally and the next thing you know it’s February and your well-considered plans are buried in a drawer.What if these New Year traditions became New Month traditions? What if we started each month with an Away/Toward list or a Yes/No list or a Loving/Losing list and kept it front and center all month, stayed accountable? What if, today, Feb.1, you scrawled down a few things you want more of and a few things you want less of and set a couple of alerts in your phone to remind you to look at it throughout the month, and maybe set aside a half an hour on Feb.
28 to assess how you did?A lightweight ritual.An experiment for the month that reminds you at intervals that the project of living is not just the business you have to carry out day to day.
It’s not jus...