Historically, I love a new year. A distinct line in the sand, a turning of a page. All those old cliches which quite frankly, I’m into.

But this year? Meh. Time feels so disjointed to me that I just can’t quite get it up for new year cliches like I would usually. (I would like to caveat however that a ‘Happy New Years!’ wish? ALL OVER IT. I WILL WISH EVERY HUMAN AND OCCASIONALLY DOGS A HAPPY NEW YEAR. I’M A MF CONTRADICTION AND FINE WITH IT.

Rather than the start of a new year, I’m enjoying feeling like there’s a moving through a season instead. A continuation through what came before, instead of a definitive ending/beginning. A blossoming?

Let’s fucking hope so.

I feel like I’m getting ready to emerge too. Not just from winter, but from something much longer and deeper… happenings more intricate than that one season could hold. Personal and collective, big and small.

After writing this, this little nugget landed in my inbox:

“Winter is a time to explore timelessness; this in-between space of the completion of one growing season and awaiting the birth of the next cycle of growth…..An understanding that there is no real completion to a season, each night feeds and renews the following day. It is here at midwinter that we return to the origin: darkness. This is why January is named after Janus, the two-faced god, who is looking both forward and backward, who is both young and old. By name alone, January holds this expansive space, moving outside of time. Each season with its own paradox.”

I have absolutely felt this timelessness and am pretty enamoured with the idea of an ‘expansive space, moving outside of time’. In fact it’s what I’ve always said January should be - something soft and laced with tenderness towards ourselves and others, with pockets of quiet and time to just be. December is always so full - there are plans and people and fullness. I want January to be lean in a specific kind of way - a sexy sparseness, if you will. My very own empty landscape.

And so it’s probably no surprise that literally anything written with any kind of NY call to action has not been speaking to me. Instead, my people this time around are brazen in their DGAF-about-new year-ness. Marlee wrote:

I don’t want to reflect on this year. I don’t want to plan my big dreams for next year. I don’t want to think about how special certain moments were or how somedays actually almost killed me.

I’d really like to just have today. I want to just be in today, pay attention to today, and have fun today.

It me! Today the day shone in that heartbreakingly beautiful way it reserves for deepest winter. I took my son to school and soothed him like I did when he was small. We had the first frost in months. I walked up one of the biggest hills in my city (which I’ve never done before) whilst singing out loud and stopped to watch the sun through the trees. My husband came to meet me and we walked over hills to the sea and watched it glisten whilst shouting new year tidings at strangers with dogs.

The days are getting brighter and colder and in my garden the many (many, many) bulbs I planted last season are breaking through the earth.

I’m so quietly optimistic about tomorrow it could break your goddamn heart.

But for now, today.

Happy New Year friends.