my new year's resolution is to become a time lord
it's a very normal thing to want and entirely possible to achieve.
I’m not usually one for New Year’s Resolutions. Writing a list of things you have tried and failed to be better at already that you can rediscover later is like voluntarily creating a psychic damage claymore mine and then planting it in your home.
However, 2023 felt like I was on a reality show where the premise was 'How Many Life Changes Can One Person Endure Before They Go Certifiably Insane?’ — which could explain the title of this essay — so I’m making an exception this year.
Let's recap.
WTFIGO (what the fuck is going on)
First up, I got unexpectedly laid off in March. Then, when things were not looking great and I was feeling super lost, I put several thousand miles and an entire ocean between myself and my problems on a whim.
Next on the 'what-the-fuck-is-happening' list: celebrating my fifth wedding anniversary by signing and submitting a Petition for Dissolution of Marriage, kickstarting a divorce process that ate up all of summer and fall and was about as much fun as sticking pins into my retinas.
That joyride was quickly followed by landing the world's dullest job because apparently, I like things like eating and having shelter.
Speaking of, let's not forget moving into my own place in December – an adventure in minimalism and existential dread.
Somewhere in the midst of all of that, I unceremoniously turned twenty-eight. In the words of the Prophet Mitski, “I was so young when I behaved twenty-five yet now I find I’ve grown into a tall child.”
As I prepared to slam the door on 2023, I had a moment of self-reflection and realised – drumroll, please – I hadn't changed a bit! I’m still the same as I was last December. And the December before that1.
I’m still whim-prone and mercurial. I’m still guarded and lonely in equal measure, using humor to deflect and claiming to be alright when I am absolutely not alright.
I still try very hard to do the things that will make me happy, but I don’t know what those things are, because I don’t really know who I am or what I want on any given day.
I know that we’re meant to change, but sometimes my sense of identity feels painfully unpredictable and fluid. Like a snake shedding its skin too frequently, I’m left feeling raw and sensitive.
I wonder how anyone is truly meant to know me when I feel like even I don’t. (I know that this directly contradicts what I just said about remaining the same – but somehow paradoxically both things can be true at the same time. idk man i just work here.)
Time keeps fracturing apart in strange ways and I still struggle with the relentlessness of ephemerality and the simple inevitable fact of mortality. We are all footprints on the beach and the tide is coming in etc etc.
I feel like I’ve become an echo (or a shadow or a ghost or some other inherently passive, voyeuristic, disconnected entity that lacks agency and is just kind of pathetic), asking the same questions and wanting the same things with nothing tangible to show for it.
tl;dr: I feel as though I’m running out of time to create a life that I actually like and also feel powerless to do anything about it. That's what the experts call “not a good time” and also “being a human being, you insufferable cunt.”
escapism: my not-so-super power
The saying goes, "wherever you go, there you are," implying you can't escape your problems. Here’s the thing: you absolutely can.
I could teach a masterclass in dodging reality. I’ve gotten so good at it, I’m starting to think that running away from problems might actually be my superpower. I should have a cape and maybe a cool superhero name like “Captain Cold Feet” or something.
In my experience, running away has afforded me the agency and clarity I’ve needed to make big, scary, arguably necessary changes. A therapist once called this impulse to flee “self-sabotage.” Personally, I prefer to think of it as a survival instinct. (Fight or flight, honey – google it!!!)
Last year, I bought a one-way ticket to a distant island when things seemed bleak and bada bing, bada boom – whole new lease on life! Were there consequences? Yes. Was it worth it? I think so. Pretty sure.2
(That’s as confident as I ever get about any of my decisions, so I’d call that a success – big thumbs up from me!)
As a result of this predisposition for escapism, I'm living a minimalist’s dream. My new place remains woefully sparse as I grapple with the permanence implied by furnishing it. Every time I browse Facebook Marketplace or contemplate putting a nail in the wall, I feel the dread trickle in.
How am I supposed to make a home of this borrowed place when the very thought of doing so inspires me to flit off again? When the act of nesting feels more like shutting the door on my own cage? And how can I be bothered to sew any proverbial seeds when I likely won’t be around to watch them germinate?
I’m mixing metaphors but the point is this: All that’ll remain of me when I leave this little brick house will be the scuffs and scars I’ve already managed to etch into the hundred-year-old hardwood floors and the stray strands of auburn hair that have made their way into the vents. To nest is to atrophy. To land – to settle in, to commit – is to die.
Whoa, sorry for getting heavy on you there. Let me just get my clown nose back on really quick…
the mental health crisis to woo-woo bullshit pipeline?
This soul-shattering existential dread that bludgeons my consciousness on a daily — if not hourly — basis is what inspires me to run off. Usually, I’d consider selling all my belongings, breaking my lease, and flitting off to the next fresh start.
But I am so bone tired that my usual coping mechanism feels unappealing. So, as December wore on, my ferocious need for control led me to attempt the whole “living in the moment” thing by flirting with “embracing seasonality.”
Yep, you heard me: I stepped into my woo-woo bullshit era and attempted to sync up energetically with nature’s rhythm.3
As the longest night approached, that meant slowing down and embracing the seemingly perennial twilight to rest along with the earth in spite of myself.
(You’ve absolutely no idea how much willpower it took to write that without heaps of self-deprecation and irony. I think I somewhat succeeded. Gold star for me.)
This involved bingeing Doctor Who (Ten is my favourite Doctor, fight me); convincing myself that sleeping before 2 AM is a thing responsible adults do (sponsor me, Z-Quil); and trying very hard to enjoy Christmas (a holiday I usually celebrate with the enthusiasm of a cat in a bathtub).
Ok sort-of did something adjacent to trying. I put up a tree, complete with a sparkly glass TARDIS. I read Dickens. I even whipped up a festive simmer pot thanks to a lovely housewarming gift from a friend.
But the moment I began to lean into living in the present, my feet started to itch, so to speak. Engaging in the things that give life meaning and add punctuation to otherwise insignificant passage of time felt precariously vulnerable rather than cheerful.
Living in the moment cast an unforgiving light that revealed the empty, hollow spaces around me, leaving me feeling breathtakingly, desperately, cripplingly alone.
damn ok wait maybe i actually need to do something lol
The fact is that when I actually take a hard look at my life, I feel claustrophobic – it feels vanishingly small, and I yearn for it to be bigger.
The problem is, it takes a lot of emotional effort and energy to truly witness oneself, and I am running on empty. I saw everything that is “wrong,” but felt too tired – and absolutely petrified – to take the steps I’d need to take to make things “right.”
So, here I am, looking at the shambles that is my life and thinking, “you know what would really help and be far easier actually than trying to change as a person? Running away.”
Well you know what? ENOUGH. This cycle is absolutely fucking exhausting and I’m over it.
I’m tired of experiencing – and therefore writing about – suffering. Though it’s one of my favourite fiction tropes, angst gets painfully dull crazy fast when it’s the trite, real-life kind.
I’m not interested in anything going on with my life; I both crave and am petrified of being alone; I’m not scared of dying because, if there is a Hell, it cannot be worse than my 9-5; et cetera.
Yes, we’ve heard that one before and it was just as dismal and uninspiring and frankly boring then as it is now. Cynicism is inherently cowardly. I am tired of the melodrama.
So what am I going to do about it?
new year, new me (cliché but crucial)
My New Year's resolution? Become a Time Lord (sans TARDIS, unfortunately). Hear me out.
I’ve had my slate wiped completely clean, which feels like a unique opportunity to actually start over without running away. The rekindling of my love for Doctor Who in the wake of 2023’s chaos was a happy coincidence, especially since the emotional arc of the 60th Anniversary Specials felt so timely and relatable. The show became a metaphor of sorts for my desire to break free from the past and take control of my life.
In the 60th Anniversary Special – spoiler alert, I guess – the Doctor, after enduring years of non-stop trauma and undergoing a significant transformation, is emotionally exhausted. In the most literal representation of self-love I’ve seen on television, the Fifteenth Doctor encourages the Fourteenth Doctor to slow down, to rest, and to heal.
The Doctor realizes they need to stop running from their emotions in favor of confronting them. By putting in the work to process his trauma, the Fourteenth Doctor allows the Fifteenth Doctor to emerge as a more balanced, assured, emotionally open version of himself.
After I was finished feeling called out, I felt inspired. That, ladies and gentlemen and all iterations thereof, is exactly what I intend to do, too.
2024 is about channelling the Doctor by focusing on healing, reconnecting with myself, and allowing myself to “go home.”
By giving myself the time and space to heal, I can hopefully regenerate into a new version of myself that runs towards the scary shit instead of away from it — taking risks, embracing the change and impermanence that go along with being alive (because unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on the day – I am not an immortal Time Lord), and actively seeking out genuine human connection despite my fear of doing so.
To echo Dostoevsky's sentiment from The Brothers Karamazov: it’s about embracing life despite logic. Even if it feels like an absolute fucking nightmare to do so.
here’s what I have actually, tangibly done or will do to make this happen
1. Commit to spending my time on the things that genuinely fulfill me.
This is about reclaiming control of my time to use it purposefully to craft a life that reflects who I am and what I value.
I'm talking reading, writing, acting, maybe some interpretive dance (ok probably not this one but still), establishing regular meetups with friends, etc.
But where am I going to get all this extra time? That’s where number two comes in…
2. Break up with my smartphone.
We had a good run, but it's not me, it's definitely you. Time to see other people (or, you know, see real, actual people in general).
By renegotiating my relationship with screens, especially social media, I’m hoping to soothe my dopamine-addled consciousness and just honestly stop partaking in something that makes me Feel Bad on the whole.
This feels so painfully cliche, but I think that’s only because we already knew the whole social media thing is bad and has been bad and yet have never done anything about it.
Well this time, I actually am going to do something about it.
I’ve switched my phone to black and white mode because we really are just corvid-like creatures looking at the shiny thing. It’s been five days since I’ve done this and I’m truly shocked how well this works, but even more so that I haven’t gotten frustrated and switched it off yet.
I’ve deleted the doom-scroll-inducing, dopamine-slot-machine, upward-comparison-hellscape-sites: TikTok, Instagram, and bloody Twitter (I refuse to call it X and you cannot make me) from my phone.
The inspiration for this, honestly, is the Light Phone II. While I personally refuse to cough up $300 for a phone that’s limited to calls, texts, MP3s, and precisely nothing else, I’m picking up what it’s putting down.
The Luddite-lite lifestyle is calling me. I no longer want to willingly hand over my attention — and my time — to the tiny nightmare rectangle that does very little for me other than exacerbate my anxieties and perpetuate the destructive cycles of consumerism.
Why the fuck am I scrolling when I could be writing? I’m too tired to write. Ok then, how about reading? I’m too tired to read. Oh ok, then I guess I’ll just open and close the same four apps for the next two hours. (???)
Why is my automatic response to boredom or tiredness voluntarily lobotomizing myself via smartphone? Why would I numbly scroll through endless overstimulating videos and images that remind me that my life is boring and unfulfilled and rather pathetic actually and not… I don’t know… go for a walk, have some coffee, or take a nap??? This is not good. It’s actually bad even.
Social media also lulls us into this weird liminal space of pseudo-connection in which we’re hyper-connected online, yet lonely IRL. I might have five hundred followers on Instagram, but I don’t have anyone I’d ask to help me build the IKEA VADHOLMA kitchen island, which is why I have a sick new scar on my left pointer finger.
I can’t think of a single person besides my mum that I’d call randomly to chat about nothing. That’s not a cool thing. I want to fix that. Which brings us to number 3…
3. Lower my impenetrable emotional shield and give into the mortifying ordeal of being known.
The fact that attracting emotionally available people requires emotional availability is such a scam, but I want True Blue by boygenius to make me cry in a “wow this is so relatable” way instead of a “wow I have never known and will never know platonic love like this” way, so I’m tearing down the Great Wall of Emotional Repression.
Once again, I’m seeking inspiration from the Doctor here. (You thought I was done with that? Oh-ho-ho, not quite.) Despite the Doctor's ability to regenerate, their memories of all of their past companions remain, meaning the Doctor carries the cumulative emotional weight of all past relationships and losses.
The Doctor bravely chooses vulnerability in spite of this, valuing the emotional richness that these relationships bring over the safety of emotional detachment. I aim to do the same thing.
4. Revive the lost art of mixtapes, snail mail, and other retronyms.
This sounds really random and disjointed but I promise it isn’t. As I considered my relationship with technology (back to point number two on this list), I started to think that it’s kind of fucked up that I don’t own any of the things that I love.
I haven’t listened to one of my favorite songs of all time – Old Man by Neil Young – in YEARS because he took his music off of Spotify (as he should).
There’s something so comforting and preferable about browsing your DVD collection rather than skimming all the various streaming services in search of whatever it is you’re looking for. Or worse, going in without a plan and attempting to find something to watch.
Plus, some of the highlights of my holiday season were receiving letters from my faraway friends I don’t get to see often. Receiving a hand-written note is exponentially more emotionally impactful than getting a text.
I want to be the kind of person who sends letters, burns mixtapes, takes photos with a film camera & puts those photos up in my home, and gifts my friends books that I’ve annotated specifically for them. Analog revival, baby.
5. Just give fewer fucks in general.
Nothing is safe from my tendency toward intellectualizing and over-analyzing – whether it’s deciding which crisps to buy or having confidence that I’m spelling a long-time friend’s name correctly, you can bet your bottom dollar I’ve overthought myself into an anxiety attack about it at least once.
(I know at this point, you’re reading this thinking, “whoa! I never would have guessed that Ezra is so neurotic and prone to catastrophizing! This is surprising and new information!”)
I can think myself out of absolutely anything. I want to stop doing that. It’s pretty lame and unsexy.
Also, I know that I’ve written this piece in a weird tone that rapidly and awkwardly oscillates between earnest and sardonic, which is yet another defense mechanism (god!!!).
I am deeply afraid of being perceived as insipid, ignorant, pathetic, or otherwise cringe, so I hide the difficult, vulnerable stuff behind layer upon layer of irony until the coating of plausible deniability is so thick, that the actual, real human emotions I intended to convey are obscured entirely.
I’m not saying I’m going to stop attempting to be funny – I’m saying I’m trying to stop attempting to be funny when it’s inappropriate to do so. I am cringe, but I am free.
cool so what now?
I’ll be writing about my experience of putting these things into practice. So if you’re interested in following the misadventures of a wannabe Time Lord (I promise to stop talking about Doctor Who), stay tuned by subscribing. Honestly, if you made it this far, you may as well.
In the meantime, tell me about your New Year's resolutions if you’ve got them. Got any tips for actually pulling this off? Am I missing anything?
There is one major difference though: I no longer live with someone who confirms that I am, in fact, just as useless and terrible as I fear I am and not only that but worse actually. So. Let’s see if that makes a difference.
To clarify, I am in no way saying that all running away is bad. Like most things, escapist behaviors exist in shades of grey. There are virtues to running away from one thing and toward something else. Hopping a flight to get some breathing room in the midst of a lot of scary stuff? I’d argue that was the “good” kind of running away. Going for hours-long astral projection walks to visit my latest dissociative cinematic universe in lieu of living my real life and confronting my problems? Not good. Categorically bad even.
A pretty good indicator that things are getting Bad™️ and that you need to seek help immediately (preferably yesterday actually) is when you start routinely hyperventilating and inducing mild hypothermia in a ✨therapeutic✨ way (see: the Wim Hof Method).
This spoke to the soul in me that bought an old blackberry off of eBay 5 years ago and shoved in a drawer.
I feel soooooo seen by this, the humor and irony deflecting the real emotions curse is a hard one to shake. I’m still looking for the cure, I hope you find yours this year, or at least some steps toward open honest real vulnerability and connection with other human beings (terrifying).