Here’s how to make 2023 your best yet.
We’re not necessarily fans of all that “new year, new you” talk — you don’t have to completely upend your life to have fulfilling experiences over the next 12 months. But flipping the calendar does offer a clean slate, and we like to look at the next year as a blank canvas that we can fill with literally anything we set our minds to.
Whether you’re interested in making the most of your work, upping your game in the garden, sharpening your culinary skills, or something else entirely, you’ve currently got the gift of endless open road ahead, and there are so many options for making 2023 your greatest year yet.
And as appealing as that might sound, we know it’s a bit more complicated to consider how to turn your ambitions into reality. So we tapped the readers of Wake-Up Call, our daily newsletter, to hear stories of how they’ve turned a new leaf — and come out better on the other side. Read on for insightful inspiration about everything that could lie ahead for you!
Take something you love to the next level
Two decades ago, Jackie Naiditch developed a chronic illness and had to give up her favorite treat, coffee. But in the last two years, she “suddenly and joyously” learned she could drink it again. She took that as a reason to do it bigger and better than ever.
“I wanted to approach it in a new way, so I became an espresso hobbyist,” Naiditch says. “I bought an espresso machine. Then I had to buy a special tamper. Then a burr grinder. Then a coffee scale. Then a…well, you get the idea.”
But that top-notch equipment wasn’t enough. Mastering the art of Naiditch’s favorite drink — cappuccino — has a steep learning curve, so she joined a Facebook group to learn the best tips and tricks. She and her fellow members video themselves whipping up their creations and share the excitement of pulling the perfect shot, and it’s only intensified her passion for one of life’s pleasures.
“My husband wants to put me in a 12-step program, and I can’t imagine why. I’m too busy eyeing a particular double-boiler espresso machine,” she says.
Get in touch with your artistic side
It’s never too late to learn something beautiful, as Barbara Nadel discovered when she enrolled in an online acrylics painting course for beginners at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. She’s been painting at least one day each week since then, and she recently showed her work at her first-ever holiday craft show, where she sold four paintings.
The best part? Nadel says she loves watching how her skill has progressed as she’s put more in time. “I learned the basics of painting through trial and error, and I can now look back at paintings I did 2.5 years ago and see improvement when I compare them to recent paintings, which is gratifying,” she tells us.
Art has also been a welcome new hobby for Jan Frankel Schau, who took up drawing during lockdown after practicing law and mediation for 40 years. It was perfect timing, too: A recent move to a bigger home, where there’s plenty space to soak up the joys of her grandchildren, will also offer more room to make and display her work.
“My passion for art grew into a regular oil painting practice, which required more space — with real doors, not just Shoji screens,” Schau says. “It’s a fresh start we weren’t planning to make in our sixties, but one that feels right for so many reasons.”
Get a new job
Melissa Sturgis got her graduate degree 40 years ago, and now she’s finally set to start the job she’s been dreaming of ever since.
Sturgis spent much of her life moving around the world every couple of years (and putting her work in public relations on hold) in support of her husband’s career in the oil and gas industry. She admits that was a challenge, though it did give her the opportunity to reinvent herself in each new location. But when her husband retired last year, the couple moved from Alaska to South Carolina, and Sturgis was ready to tap back into her purpose.
That took some time. “I landed several interviews but very few offers,” she tells us. “Curly gray hair and a resume with numerous gaps didn’t help.” But after 15 months, someone finally approached her with the offer of a lifetime: an invitation to apply to be the manager of her city’s new art center.
“My husband said, ‘My job took you away from doing what you love for so long, so why don’t you give this a shot?'” she recalls. “I did — and here I am, age 62, working in my dream job and loving every minute.”
Call it quits
On the other side of that “new job” coin is a pretty appealing alternative: leaving behind your work for good.
The choice to retire is a very personal decision, and it’s got to happen at just the right time, but when the stars do align, pulling that trigger can be so sweet. Elizabeth Randall recently retired from her career as a public school teacher, and while that meant leaving behind work that was deeply important to her, it’s made room for a lot of new pleasures, too.
“While I cherish and root for every student I ever had, I cannot believe what a gift retirement is,” Randall says. “I get up every day and watch the sun rise — teachers tend to be morning people — and plan my day while drinking coffee.” (As an added bonus, she’s also published not one but two books in 2022: the suspenseful novel Fire is the Test of Gold and the non-fiction tome Historic Orlando (Past and Present), which she worked on with her husband.)
Things are going just as well for Teresa Mysliwy. For what she calls “the ultimate fresh start,” she and her partner decided to retire from their stressful jobs as lawyers and move from the U.S. to Mexico. The transition was a little complicated at first but completely worth it.
“We sold our houses, cars, and almost all our belongings and moved to a place we’d been to twice. We had to get resident visas and navigate red tape in Spanish, as well as inform our loved ones of our decision,” Mysliwy recalls. “Three years later, we love it here. The weather is perfect, and our pace of life enabled us to become volunteers in the community and meet people from many different places. My partner is fulfilling his teenage dream of being a jazz guitarist, and I’ve discovered that I’m actually a pretty good cook. We are enjoying our best lives!”
Turn your hobby into a business
Maybe you’re sick of reporting to your boss every day, but you’re not quite ready to completely give up your productivity. If you’ve ever thought about starting a side hustle, 2023 could be your year to make it happen — and possibly even turn it into your main hustle.
Doreen Raftery experienced this herself when Covid caused her to close the business she’d run for 20 years. That left her with a whole lot of time on her hands, so she decided to take up golf. But it didn’t go quite as smoothly as she expected.
“I was very frustrated with the sport and knew that I needed to practice on a regular basis,” Raftery remembers. “I also needed a practice tool that worked for me. I grabbed a pair of ladies’ nylons, a real golf ball, and a spike, and I created my own tool. I practiced with this in my backyard, and people loved it.”
Her invention helped train her to keep her head down and focus on the ball, and it boosted her confidence, too. The solution was such a good one that she turned it into a real product, and Raftery just spent the year building KlockItGolf into a small business she can be proud of.
Learn to play an instrument
Music found Beth Stymiest at exactly the perfect time: She’d just retired from 35 years in education, and the Covid-19 pandemic was majorly heating up. She had never played before (“Disastrous piano lessons when I was 6 led me to believe I had no musical talent,” she tells us) but she decided to buy a ukulele in hopes it could become a fun social activity.
Since then, she’s made fantastic progress, advancing from a few simple chords to now learning chucking, finger picking, and riffs. And Stymiest adds the instrument has been fantastic for her mental health, too: “You can’t frown when the ukulele music is going down,” she says.
To make things even better, she was recently asked by a teacher in her community in New Brunswick, Canada, to teach the ukulele to a class of fourth and fifth graders. “It’s a hoot!” Stymiest says.
“What started out as a lark has turned into a passion,” she goes on. “Those long years of Covid isolation provided me with lots of time to practice and find tutorials to support my learning. Learning to play the ukulele has taught me that you are never too old to learn something new. “
See the world
Penny Olsen has been lucky enough to travel to many fabulous locations, but it was always with her husband or girlfriends. Now that she’s gotten divorced and many of her pals have become less interested in hitting the road, she’s ready to embark on her first solo adventure. In 2023, she’ll celebrate turning 60 by spending six magnificent weeks in Italy.
There may be a few nerves about going abroad on her own, but Olsen’s taking along some fantastic advice: “A new acquaintance told me, ‘You’re a woman with a credit card — you got this!'” she tells us.
Travel is such a great way to feed your soul that Claire Berger decided to turn it into her new livelihood. After a move from Los Angeles to Brooklyn, she just launched Italian Culinary Adventures, a company that arranges weeklong gastronomical journeys in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.
“We built this company from the ground up during the pandemic, mostly through online research and Zoom,” Berger says. “We are thrilled to have completed our first year hosting guests in Italy. They fell in love with this gorgeous region, filled with memorable meals and cooking classes, and we can’t wait to return in 2023!”
Start a podcast
That thought-provoking conversation you keep returning to with friends and colleagues? It could be the basis for your next creative project.
That’s what happened to Stephanie Plante, who resides in Marin County, California. The local newspaper and Chamber of Commerce were facilitating a dialogue about supporting businesses owned by people of color, which led to a campaign called We Are One Marin — and then, the We Are One Marin Podcast. A grant from the Marin Community Foundation funded a total of 26 episodes, many of which have already been published (and the rest will be out by February 2023).
Plante, a former TV reporter, is working alongside project manager and producer Kalina Cloud to facilitate essential discussions about supporting the most fair experience possible for everyone, no matter their background.
“We are having hard conversations every day about race and equity, conversations about how to have these talks as a white person and a brown person, and mostly, we are listening to our colleagues and their experiences,” Plante says.
Turn your gratitude into action
Like all of us, Deane Bowers is deeply grateful for the devoted service of America’s healthcare workers — and she turned that gratitude into a meaningful project that not only inspired her artistic spirit, but also communicated the appreciation we all feel for these heroes.
During the height of the pandemic, Bowers watched with compassion as tireless healthcare professionals worked past the point of exhaustion to keep patients safe. (That included her daughter, a nurse, and her son, a PA student, who both worked on the front lines.)
“You can only imagine my constant worry for them,” Bowers says. “Instead of falling into a deep pit of anxiety and depression thinking about them and their colleagues’ wellbeing, I got off the sidelines and created an art project to honor healthcare workers.”
At a time when physical separation was the norm, 18 artists from around the country formed a collective to create The Together While Apart Art Project, which now hangs permanently in the main lobby of The University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville. But the effort goes beyond that: Bowers also partnered with the American Nurses Association to raise funds for the mental and physical healthcare that nurses desperately need. She’s on a mission to raise $20,200 (“an amount chosen to reflect the year 2020, the year nurses became daily heroes”) and you can donate right here.
Count your blessings
Last November, during Thanksgiving celebrations, Sandy Dowdy’s home caught fire, thanks to a faulty regulator on her brand-new air fryer.
“As soon as I heard my son say that he couldn’t put the fire out with the extinguisher, I told my two grandchildren that we needed to go out of Grandma’s house,” she recalls. “Of course, they soon realized what was happening. They started to say, ‘Grandma! Your house!’ I simply continued to respond to everything they said with, ‘It’s OK. Grandma will get a new house. They will build a new house for Grandma.'”
She’s lost a lot, and she admits it’s been difficult, but Dowdy’s been spending plenty of time looking on the bright side. For one thing, her rural community in Ohio has rallied around her in a moving way: “I’m a teacher of 29 years, and the students and faculty had a hat day and took donations. They gave us over $1,500!”
Another incredible stroke of luck: Dowdy had lost her wedding rings in the fire, but her son miraculously discovered them buried in the soot. And now, with the help of a local jeweler, they’re looking better than ever.
The experience has taught the family a lot (including the importance of keeping a fire-proof box in the house and staying on top of your insurance coverage), and they’re currently in the final stages of construction on their home. Even though it’s not quite done yet, Dowdy and her husband still found a way to pay tribute to the heroes who helped her that terrible day — and she shares the details with a dose of her signature optimism.
“My husband arranged for a dinner to be catered for the volunteer firefighters who were there the day of our fire,” she says. “He had hoped the house would be done while the weather was nice so he could grill for them and have them out to the house, but maybe that will happen next summer!”
