On Charting Your Own Course

A Slightly Different Take on Setting New Year's Resolutions

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Photo by Anastasia on Dupe

On Monday, I sat alone at a table in Café de Flore, sipping a café allongé and engaging in one of my favorite solo activities — eavesdropping.

Like most restaurants in Paris, the tables were squeezed close together and I could hear every word between the two young girls from India on my left and the older American couple at the table to their left.

The older couple were especially chatty, so I collected several snippets of their story, like a crow gathering shiny things for her nest: They were from Kansas City (“You know — the Chiefs? Kansas City Chiefs? We’re from there.”), had been traveling with their grown children and grandchildren who had left to other locales that morning (“We’re footloose and fancy free now!”), and had been gifted the trip by the aforementioned children to celebrate the husband’s 80th birthday on December 27th.

After griping a bit about his age, one of the young girls asked: “But it’s your birthday. Are you happy?”

“I’m happy, but I wish I was young again,” he said. Of all the little snippets I’d stolen from their conversation, that one stuck in my throat. I turned my attention away for awhile and focused on my Œufs au plat ou brouillés, bacon (fried eggs with bacon).

After I’d settled my bill, I walked past their table and admitted to what I overheard. “Happy birthday,” I told him. “I just turned 40.”

“I just turned 80!” he said excitedly, understandably not realizing how much I knew about his life. “When’s your birthday?”

“December 18th,” I said.

“Mine’s December 27th!” (I resisted the urge to tell him I knew.)

“Congratulations,” I said. “You’ve got double on me.”

He and his wife smiled at me — happy, I hope, to have this milestone recognized. And I did recognize it; it was important and exciting, and I thought about it on and off for the rest of the day.

I thought about how, if I’m lucky, I’m still only halfway through my life. Perhaps not even.

I thought about the time I’ve worried I’ve wasted, the things I haven’t yet done that I’ve wanted to do for years, the ways that I human that I wish were more regularly rooted in recognition of my own humanity and that of others.

And I remembered that I still — hopefully — have so much life left to live. Why spend it now, already, with worry when I can still choose how I spend it?

Why worry when I am living that man’s wish? I am young again.

Who knows what I’ll wish for when I’m 80? I hope I’ll be looking back at my youth more with fondness than with longing, though I understand the inclination for the latter.

From where I stand now, I think I have the opportunity — not to ensure that I don’t also wish for my youth again necessarily, but to ensure that, if I do, it will only be because I lived my life so fully, I’ll wish I could go back and do it all again.

I thought of this again last night, on New Year’s Eve, as I sat in my cozy little Montmartre l' appartement and reflected on my resolutions for the year ahead.

Over the course of my last — and solo — week in France, I’d jotted down Ins (highlights and wins!) and Outs (challenges and areas of improvement) from 2024.

Then, I’d noted what I’d learned from all of it, and what I could change in 2025 to reconcile all of that.

Finally, I reviewed my astrology for the year ahead — readings from

Alice Bell

and Nadine Jane, as well as my solar return chart for the year — and lined up suggestions from the stars with my own intuitive intentions.

In the end, I came up with eight resolutions — each with their own more specific goals — that can act as anchors for my year. They may change, of course, but they feel really solid to me right now; really rooted in what I’ve gained from the last year (and the 39 years before that), and what I want moving forward.

If I were to accomplish any of these eight things — even in one singular moment of 2025 — and if I were to continue living my life from this place of care and purpose every year after, I trust these next 40 years may be even more fulfilling than the first.

And that’s all I can hope for, right? I can’t know what I’ll be feeling at 80. I can’t know what I’ll miss, what I’ll wish for, what I’ll look back on with reverence or regret.

For now, I can only hope to make it that far (and farther, please!), and do my best to chart a course that future version of me will be so grateful she got to live.