This week I am celebrating my new year.
I know, September is a little bit early to be doing that, right? But let me explain the method to my madness.
During the Pandemic, my cousin and I decided to embark on The Artist’s Way which is a 12 week course by Julia Cameron that guides you through the process of recovering your creative self. Because of how much stuff came up and how transformational we found it to do, we decided that from here on in, we would mark the completion of the course as our New, New Year!
Fast forward a few years and I have found this beneficial for a number of reasons.
It has successfully taken the pressure away from the “New Year, New Me” rhetoric that starts with us feeling full to the brim with hope at the ideas and possibilities of the future, but then isn’t a sustainable mode of shaping the future because no one is a brand new version of themselves when the clock hits midnight. Plus chances are, those New Year’s resolutions will not stay with you beyond January. It also means that by time the time January does come around we’re already 4 months in to the goals that we’d like to achieve and we’ve not had to do it at the same time as everyone else which has inadvertently taken away being caught up in comparing my goals with other peoples’.
It happens just before the season changes and so feels like a really lovely way to see in Autumn by thinking about the goals and things that I’d like to work on. It’s helped me to realise that I quite like changing my pacing and my rhythm with the seasons. So as the nights draw in and the mornings get darker, I shift from my early rising and move with the sunrise and sunset. I know that I am in a fortunate position where I am in control of my working hours and so I am able to be flexible with this but it has really shown me the benefit of not trying to maintain the same pace throughout the whole year, along with showing me that physically, mentally and emotionally, I have different needs depending on the time of year.
You might be unsurprised to hear that I am very big on visuals and feelings. I enjoy seeing the landscapes change over the year, from barren branches covered in snow to the warmth of a summer’s day. I’ve completed The Artist’s Way three times now and each time one thing that has always come up is how important I find it to make time for the things that I enjoy and to avoid my day to day being filled to the brim with other peoples’ expectations of my time.
I’ve been looking ahead to my 30th birthday which is happening in February and have been thinking about how I’d like to live. I started this over the last few months by cutting out alcohol and deactivating my Instagram whilst also just trying to move more daily. But I’d like to look at it more holistically too. As I enter my 30s, how can I be more well rounded in all areas of my life so that there is a level of health overall?
From a physical point of view, I’d like to embrace movement. Throughout my 20s, there were times when I was very ill and rest had to take more of a priority. I’m grateful that at the moment, I am healthier and the health complaints I suffered with are now less of a concern. Unpopular opinion but I enjoy exercise. There’s a virtual workout programme that I enjoy doing where the trainer often says, “exercise is not punishment, it’s nourishment.” So I’d like to nourish my body more, whether that be 10 minutes a day or 45 mins. Just some form of movement as close to daily as it possible.
I’d also like to be physically present more. A lot of the work I’m doing at the moment is remote and whilst I’m so thankful for technology and the ways it’s allowed me to grow a global network of people, I’ve just moved to a new city and I think there’s something really important about making sure you connect with people in person too. So I’m on the look out for how I can do that more, maybe joining a sports team or something? Who knows. But I’m open to making new connections with people local to me and building a physical community outside of the zoom boxes.
I don’t come from a family of calm talkers 😅 we bottle things up whilst the problem shakes and shakes and shakes until that bottle erupts and everything fizzes out in the open, covering everything in it’s path.
I don’t want to be a bottle anymore. Not a pressurised one anyway.
I’d like to be more of a healthy talker in general. To be less “I’m fine” about things. There’s some repression there that I’m not sure where it comes from but I’d like to get better at identifying when that’s happening and not going from one emotional extreme to another.I think I’m starting to get better at this and thankfully I think I do a lot of work on myself so this isn’t a new thing, but just something that I’d like to continue to improve on.
My relationship with God has been a funny old thing throughout my life. Being brought up as a Catholic, God was always something that was there. The how has changed over time, especially when I was a student. I’ve realised with time that it’s a really significant part of my life. I really feel like having a faith should, regardless of what it is, be about how we leave this earth better than how we found it.
I’ve been thinking about this phrase of radical hospitality recently and about how I can make the circles I’m in as hospitable as possible. How I can make welcoming spaces where anyone feels like they belong there. There are things about my identity and personality that have made me feel like I’ve had to choose between parts of myself. I don’t want to compartmentalise who I am and I would hate for people who I come into contact with to feel like they’d have to do that too. So over this next year, I want to continue to explore what it looks like to be radically hospitable and to understand how to action that more. I think at the moment, the western world is really butchering Christianity in a way that makes us all look like bigots who hate everyone and it’s really heartbreaking to see. I want to emulate Jesus in how I treat people, I’m not talking about going around healing everyone and turning water into wine (though what a power to have)… I’m talking about the ways Jesus includes everyone without conditions on who is or isn’t allowed. I’m so fortunate that my friends are such a vibrant, mixed bag of people who I love so much and I’m really struck by the possibilities of what it could look like if people weren’t so burnt by other people claiming to be “religious”. I don’t deem myself to be religious, but I do have a faith. I think the two things, whilst being somewhat connected, speak of different things which I’m sure I’ll go into in a different Substack some other time. But I will say that I think there’s something to be said for the way many a religious stance leads to unnecessary exclusion and turns society into a members club where people think they’re not good enough to join. No thanks.
In a world that’s constantly trying to making us feel crap about ourselves, I’m really happy that I’m going into my new year and my 30th year feeling very confident in who I am. This last year, I have taken a lot of knocks. I’ve broken up with friends (which, I think is actually harder than romantic breakups in some ways), I’ve gotten jobs, I’ve quit jobs and have gone through a lot mental health related things. Not to sound like a masochist or anything but it’s been a really good year of change. In hindsight, it has been a year of pruning and filtering. I didn’t realise just how much of an emotional hoarder I had become but gosh it’s good to have released a lot of that stuff. Now it gives me room for other things and I’m excited at what that’s going to look like in the year ahead.
I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of this post is. I think it’s probably my internal monologue being written down and put into words. I suppose it also acts as my end of year roundup, looking back at how things have been whilst looking ahead at the ideals of the future.
So here’s to my new year!
New year, same old me but with a few touch ups and upgrades here and there.
xo