Depth Year: One Month In

I’m one month in to my Depth Year and honestly … my life hasn’t changed yet.

To recap, a Depth Year is a year of very low spending in an effort to use what you already have and go deep in the commitments you’ve already made. A Depth Year is different from a low-buy year because the low-buy is only a part of it. The focus of the Depth Year is on clearing away the distractions and nervous system meltdowns that come with consumerism.

These are my rules and priorities:

No New Books
No New Tarot Decks (or other spiritual tools)
No New Courses
No New Notebooks or Stationery (except on a replacement basis)
No New Clothes Except Quarterly (or replacement basis)
Makeup on a replacement-only basis

Now, we are only one month into the new year and so there are some aspects of inertia that I’m dealing with here. I have still been receiving some packages this month, particularly from things I purchased frantically at the end of 2023. I found that because I was planning on doing a Depth Year, there was this sort of perceived scarcity that spurred me to put in some orders. Just one more book order, just one more lipstick for the collection … after all, I wouldn’t be buying anything new for a year! It was now or never!

So January hasn’t felt that much different, in terms of items coming into my life. I’m even reading a lot of the same books I was reading at the end of 2023. (I was up to reading 8 books at once at the end of 2023 so now I’m trying to finish them one by one … I think I’m down to reading 4 at once now. Progress.) I’m going on a weekend away with friends, which has taken up the money that I might have spent on buying things, so I’m not even feeling like I’m saving much.

And I’m not going to lie, this is a little bit of a disappointment. There was a not-so-small part of me that was really looking forward to writing this blog post with an update that everything has changed! After a month, the Depth Year is finally paying off! /s

I tend to be a fairly impatient person. I think this has to do with the fact that I’m usually multitasking and so when I do sit down and focus on something I want it to move quickly. I want to feel as though I’m making rapid progress when I am focused on something because I don’t know the next time I will return to that thing. But depth doesn’t work like that. Depth is something that you cultivate over a longer period of time, it is learned from experience counted in years, not weeks or months. So of course my impatience with myself isn’t reasonable, but it’s still present and accounted for.

Temptations

After one month I’m starting to notice patterns of things that are tempting me. Most of them have to do with knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge, or with journaling. There have been several witchcraft/folk magic courses that I’ve been tempted to register for, but then I remind myself that I don’t have the proper time to dedicate to them. I know that if I registered

Just in case you’re curious and/or looking for a class, these are the ones that have tempted me:

Constructing Animism: Rewilding Our Craft with Albert Bjorn Shiell

This course looks incredible and frankly Albert should be charging much more for it. I might still sign up for this one yet. I am hoping to teach something similar but different in 2025, and so if I took this class it would be like holding myself accountable for creating this other class. I actually reached out to Albert to let him know that I was considering teaching a similar class.

Mastering Cursebreaking at the Cauldron Black

This is a six month course on cursebreaking and hex breaking which is something I have been fascinated with lately. For one thing, when I do take witchcraft clients a not insignificant amount of them are looking for cursebreaking services. I do have training in this from the Nordic Magic intensive I took with Johannes Gårdbäck, but the level of focus that this class offers is tempting to me.

Ultimately, I decided against taking either of these classes because I still have courses I’ve signed up for that I need to complete. I also have books that I haven’t read on the topics of these courses, and so instead of spending more money on this, I think it’s better to just commit to finishing those books before I sign up for more courses on that topic. That way I’m building the knowledge incrementally.

Here’s the thing that working in this area has taught me: There will always be another class. There will always be another teacher that comes forward. There are very few “once in a lifetime” events or classes - and when there are once in a lifetime events, it’s usually something that I have put the work in to build. It’s very apparent when I need to take the opportunity, and

Reframing Failure

I have purchased two things in January:

A book.
A used brown Malden filofax.

The book was purchased before my friends and I went on a Reading Retreat - it’s a sort of memento for the trip. I told myself before we met up at the coffeeshop/bookshop that I wouldn’t buy a book, and I still did. The filofax will get its own post - essentially, I am enjoying commonplacing this year but I can’t handwrite out articles, so I bought a filofax so I could type them and work with them that way (again, I promise, more on commonplacing later). The commonplace book is like having a second brain. It’s an analog system for tracking things that you are studying. Traditionally, a commonplace book is a notebook where you copy out articles, quotes, and other pieces of information long hand. There is really something to being able to remember things better if you copy them out longhand (or, in my case, typing them out).

I haven’t received the filofax yet and I am very eager to test it out, but I am also filled with trepidation. Because what if I thought this would be some kind of necessary addition to my journaling and learning system when it won’t be? But I also know that this is something I’ve been trying to do in my journaling/writing/creative system for a long time now and with my chronic pain centered on my hands and arms, writing articles out longform is simply not going to work.

When I think about these purchases, I worry that I didn’t stick to my principles enough. They are (relatively) small things on the face of it, but it’s my first full month on the Depth Year plan! If I didn’t last a month, how am I supposed to last a year?

I feel like I’ve already “failed” at my depth year - and that’s ok. The point is that I’m paying attention - not that I’m perfect.

Returning to the Root

So what is the point? Why am I doing this depth year? And how does that measure up against the feelings of failure?

I will say another factor driving me toward feeling like a failure at this was that I was hoping to save a lot of money this year and I feel like I haven’t really been able to do that. And again, these things take time! But with inflation the way that it is and the economy looking as bleak as it is, saving is really difficult. My spouse and I are kind of treading water right now, but that is changing with their expanded hours at work.

All of that to say: It doesn’t feel like my money buys much anymore, and so the depth year savings are accruing much more slowly than I thought they would.

And then I have to remind myself: This isn’t just about saving money. It’s about going deep into the things that I love. Maybe the filofax will actually be a really pivotal way for me to do that, considering how I will be using it for commonplacing. In that sense, the purchase of the filofax itself isn’t necessarily a failure on my part to uphold the values of the depth year. It’s more a reckoning of the things that I want, and what wasn’t working about my current system. I want to engage with my interests in a more tangible, analog, retro way - and I am simply not able to handwrite things that are that long because of my disability. This is an adaptation, not a failure.

I’m excited to see what other insights this Depth Year brings, and how it changes the way I think about things. I think that forcing myself to consider that it will take me a while to build my savings (even if I’ve stopped making new purchases and therefore have “more free money”) will help me slow down. I have a great capacity to take in a lot of information all at once, and a broad range of interests, and that can lead me to move on from one thing to the next too quickly. And while adaptability is very important to me, I also want to acknowledge that I have already collected a literal and metaphorical library of my own interests. Why not just try to use what I already have? To learn from what I already have?

THIS is the root of the Depth Year. It is not a year of asceticism, of deprivation. It’s actually meant to be a very rich year of exploration. It is not just a No Buy year! It is a year of support from past me, of finding support in the tools I’ve already collected.

I’m so eager to return to the blog next month, in a few months, next year and update you all on what’s up.