{"id":35,"date":"2017-01-06T12:36:14","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T12:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kirstenirving.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/06\/new-years-fear-and-quantum-hotness\/"},"modified":"2022-08-03T22:57:42","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T21:57:42","slug":"new-years-fear-and-quantum-hotness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirstenirving.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/06\/new-years-fear-and-quantum-hotness\/","title":{"rendered":"New Year\u2019s fear and Quantum Hotness"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a brilliant vignette in Adam Warren\u2019s graphic novel Empowered<\/i> in which the insecure hero\u2019s boyfriend Thugboy lets us in on his theory of quantum hotness:<\/p>

\"Cartoon
Image copyright Adam Warren<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>

It\u2019s a prime cut of comic book truth that\u2019s funny, witty and recognisable.<\/p>

Every New Year, I don\u2019t so much get quantum hotness as quantum competence. Whether I feel like a success or not depends on what day of the week you enquire. It\u2019s so freaking fragile. Success is the make-believe bubble you\u2019re told to hold in drama class warm-ups. More often, it\u2019s an unwrapped burrito spilling all over the shop.<\/p>

31 December [insert year here]:<\/b> I\u2019m fired up with my list of \u201cGo for it! You can do anything! Success quest ultrayear!\u201d resolutions. I\u2019m excited, confident and ready to roll. These resolutions weigh less for me on the healthy side (I\u2019m a realist) and more on the art side. Put together this manuscript, resurrect this beloved project and so on.<\/p>

Then suddenly New Year is over and it\u2019s 5th January. Work, admin and household tasks elbow their way onto the agenda, tiredness creeps in and suddenly missing one item off the daily to-do list means you\u2019ve failed the entire day.<\/p>

From that point on, it\u2019s a steady ledge-shuffle to avoid falling into Black Dog Mire. The whisper in your ear that \u201cYou never finish anything, do you?\u201d If I\u2019m unlucky, the dog\u2019s mates Imposter Syndrome and Status Anxiety will bring a cheap bottle between them and swing in through the side door.<\/p>

Of course I\u2019m not alone in this. Many people don\u2019t make resolutions at all so they avoid the feeling of failure. For me, that\u2019s even worse. I need to know that if I failed, I failed while attempting something ambitious. If I have attempted nothing, other failures manifest to take the places of the resolutions.<\/p>

If you too are feeling this seasonal hopelessness and guilt, I\u2019m not going to send you some motivational bullshit (my feelings on the matter being clear<\/a>). Instead, I send you a tip of the hat for making those resolutions, trying, failing, recalibrating and carrying on. You\u2019re doing ok.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On quantum confidence, or why one day you’re The Shit and the next you’re just shit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,114,100],"tags":[80,117,116,37,115,79,36,118],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-personal","category-poetry","tag-anxiety","tag-arts-and-mental-health","tag-confidence","tag-empowered","tag-imposter-syndrome","tag-mental-health","tag-new-year","tag-status-anxiety","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kirstenirving.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kirstenirving.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kirstenirving.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirstenirving.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirstenirving.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirstenirving.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1162,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirstenirving.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions\/1162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirstenirving.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kirstenirving.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirstenirving.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirstenirving.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}