Why My Word of the Year for 2023 Is…

On one of my posts in 2022, a teenager commented simply, “cringe.”

I don’t even remember what it was about. I didn’t even speak. Likely, it was a short video of tree branches in the wind. Something Mary Oliver would approve of noticing. I have done far more embarrassing things on my Instagram. But that one really got to me. I had been branded cringe for simply existing.

And then, I was angry. I was branded cringe for seeing and feeling joy. For paying attention. As Julia Cameron says, “happiness lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention.” It occurred to me that I am at a crossroads. The crossroad between happy and cool.

The longer I am alive, the more I realize that you cannot be happy and also care deeply as coming off as cool. By its very etymology, “cool” denotes detachment, a certain arrogant frostiness. Those who are labelled “cool” are often pretty guarded. Occasionally, such as with a famous person protecting their private life, this is warranted. But chasing cool denotes a certain artifice. Chasing cool demands that you tamp down any messy emotions, any messy expressions or experiments. It demands that you engage with creativity only insofar as you learn to recognize it in others.

That’s why, in 2023, I’m rejecting cool in favor of cringe.

As I’ve written about before, I don’t want to be cool. Whether or not I try it doesn’t really matter - it simply will not happen. So if I can’t be cool…why not lean into the cringe? Embrace her weird, whacky embrace.

Lean into joy, curiosity, exploration, experimentation, laughing more, crying more, doing more, trying more. Lean into all the big things and all the small things. Post videos and photos that aren’t perfect, but show how I’m learning. Write more. Dream more. Sing more. Dance more. Take more photos of myself. Take more photos of others.

As Tumblr so succinctly put it: in 2023, I am cringe, but I am free.