Making Time
Shalinee in Sevilla
Newsletter
Happy New Year! I’m back with another newsletter :)
In recent years, I’ve gotten progressively more into the idea of new years resolutions. The idea of setting goals and making plans to achieve them is always appealing—it means a new start, a time of reflection and a chance to recommit to the things you always say you want to do. But, like most people, I can’t say I have ever been particularly successful at following through on resolutions that I have set.
Things feel different now, though. The last few years of my life have been tumultuous, in both good and bad ways. In the last 2 years alone, I moved thousands of miles three separate times. But now, I’m here, in LA. And I’ll be here for a long time. When I say that a PhD is five years, often times, people balk at the sheer length. But to me, I see stability. Life never goes to plan, but for the time being, I can reasonably assume I’ll be living in LA and chugging along through grad school for the foreseeable future. And after a lot of change in my life, that stability is exciting! Because the truth is, goals, which mostly amount to building habits, don’t happen overnight. And for the first time in my life, I feel like I can actually build real routines, real adult habits. I don’t see my 2025 resolutions as particularly special or even specific to 2025, but instead a chance to think about how to implement goals I’ve always had, and how to continue building the life I started to build this past fall.
In thinking about that—about how I can help myself make time for the things I always say I want to make time for, I realized that one key component could be this newsletter. Not only is spending time on personal projects/writing always something I want to do more of, but they always say that accountability to others and tracking your progress are important parts of achieving goals. It’s why I love goodreads’ ‘Reading Challenge’ feature. You set a goal of how many books you want to read a year. You can track your progress and your friends can see it. So, I’ve decided to do my own version of that, with this newsletter. The first Sunday of every month, I’ll send out my newsletter, which will include what’s been on my mind lately—questions I have, things I’ve learned, what’s inspiring me, and a little about the progress I’ve made on my resolutions, which are below:
My 2025 Resolutions:
Consistently work out (~4x/week), rock climb, and be able to do a pull up by the end of the year
Read more, but not just novels—Minimally, at least 1 short story a month
Spend more time being a “tourist” in my city–go to museums, fun restaurants, parks, new neighborhoods, etc.
Spend more time on my personal projects—for now, this means sending out a monthly newsletter!
I think all of my resolutions can be summed up in one way—by making more time for myself. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about something I saw in an instagram reel recently. A woman was talking about the difference between ‘resting’ and ‘replenishing.’ The idea is we are ‘resting’ when we do things like staying in and watching a movie, sleeping, lying on the couch. But we are ‘replenishing’ when we do those things that fulfill us, that fuel and inspire us. I had so much fun last quarter both resting and socializing a lot. But this quarter, in addition to all of that, I want to make more time to do the things that really fuel me. I love exploring a city or going to a museum. I love writing, I love reading good writing. I love rock climbing. I need to make time for these things, not because I need to improve upon myself in some way, but simply because I enjoy them, and I feel more alive when I do these things. I bet that a lot of people feel similarly that they don’t find time to do all the things they enjoy. One of the biggest hindrances, I think, is our phones and social media. My hope this year is that I can shift some of the time I use on social media or just on my phone in general, doing who knows what, to time spent doing things that genuinely fuel me.
Sometimes things I encounter on social media really do make me think, like the reel I mentioned about rest/replenishment. But, I think social media is more bad than good. So another way to think of my resolutions is I hope to find inspiration from other things, to encounter other sources that make me think. To read an essay instead of watching three reels.
I hope this newsletter can be a source of inspiration for you too! One of the best parts of my life in Spain was the way I got to talk to my friends about life—we had a constant ongoing exchange of our ideas about the world. I hope some of the things I say spark ideas in your own head, or maybe something I mention reading will catch your attention. More than that, though, I hope we all make more time to do the things we love in 2025.
If you’re interested, please subscribe if you haven’t already! I’m wishing you a great start to the new year! Talk to you in a month :)
-Shalinee
P.S. This was ready to go out Sunday, but there were some technical difficulties! I promise to send these out the first Sunday of the month!