Pleasure in Being Bad

While the Gregorian calendar has gone apace, the Year of the Fire Horse begins today. Generally, if my January and change aren’t going well, I always look forward to the Lunar New Year as another opportunity to get my life together. Although, I still think it’s quite an ask to assert we start anew in midwinter. That said, my January has been going… quite well? Perhaps, suspiciously so? I consider my personal new year as starting on January 11, which was when I returned to New York after visiting family. 

Since then, I’ve maintained a fairly active social calendar. The week I returned, I invited a friend over to make personal goal cards, which have been popular alternatives to New Year’s Resolutions online. By no stretch of the imagination are the ones I created things of beauty, but it was also not the point of the exercise! In the previous iteration of this newsletter, I spoke about my practice of scrawling “THIS IS NOT PRECIOUS” across the top of a piece of paper or Word doc if I’m feeling particularly stuck on a piece of writing. The equivalent with these stamp cards was to apply pen to paper and go off to the races. The goal with both is to simply begin. The end result is that I get what I set out to do: physical manifestations of goals I’ll get to track across 2026.

The following day I met with a newer friend to play ping pong. I’d actually wanted to get into ping pong since I moved to NYC, but took no steps towards making this reality. Before I got back, this friend had posted a call on Instagram to see if anyone would be interested in playing, so I said yes. Y’all, I was so bad. We played seven games to 21. The first few were respectable in that I was able to score double digits. Then, my friend was warmed up and it was all downhill for me. That said, I had so much fun. My other recent encounters with the game were against my cousin’s ten-year-old kid, which involved more silliness like me holding four paddles rather than actual focused play. Losing so badly has only left me hungry for more, although I think it will take me many more hours until I have any hope of getting a game on them.

As noted in my last dispatch, I mentioned wanting to get back into trombone and I have! Since so many years have lapsed between my regularly playing and now, I certainly do not have any of the muscles necessary to do what I want them to do. But, it’s been so wonderful getting to take myself through fundamentals again and place those building blocks so I can get to a place of playing the pieces I want to work on. It’s also been very fun to discuss this journey with non-musician friends. iykyk

All of these examples are celebrations of being new, or newly returning, to a practice. Notably, I have been bad at all of these activities, which I say with a lot of compassion for myself. Being bad at something, particularly new hobbies, is not a negative thing. I think there’s a lot of pleasure to be derived from moving through the process of a thing. Being new and being bad at something can help reframe thinking about immediate competency, which exist in realms like work. As part of my goal to create more this year, I am also trying to enjoy the process of creating with intention. So as we head into the new Lunar New Year, I ask: What are you being bad at this year?

For your consideration

• Along with the start of the Lunar New Year, it’s also the first night of Ramadan. Amal for Palestine is running their 2026 Ramadan fundraiser to provide food and iftar meals