Welcoming 2024 Gently
some brief thoughts on this new year
The calendar has turned. Industries are lined up on the sidelines waving signs, hoping to "help" you with your resolutions. Meanwhile, in the North, much of nature is still turned inward. While it's good to pause a moment and take stock of your life, this moment is a bit arbitrary, and it's ok if you aren't feeling it.
I find that I feel most new year-y in the fall when school starts. I suppose all of those years in school where notebooks are fresh and clothes are new has conditioned me to seek that newness in September. In January I am groggily coming out of the holidays, just trying to get things back in order. The laundry needs doing, gifts need homes, and soon all the decorations will need to be packed away.
I don't feel ready to take stock and wonder what I want more of in 2024. Truth be told, I'm feeling a bit like the holiday train sped off without me. Can I really be over already? I do know that, as always, I want more of myself this year. I want to continue to get to know this body, this mind, and the shifts that happen with age. Each year I hope I'm able to set aside more of who I think I should be to embrace who I am. I hope I can meet all of the places where I don't measure up with compassion and a continued desire to do better, not because my mistakes make me not good enough but because I believe I am capable of more - more love, more grace, more compassion, more understanding.
I know I want to keep trying to be the parent my kids need and a partner growing in grace beside my husband. I want to try harder to keep connection with friends and family. I want to be part of making the world a better place. You know, easy stuff.
At some point I may sit down and come up with a word of the year or a word of the season. For now I'm trying to ease my way in to 2024 as I ease my way out of 2023.
I don't have a grand plan laid out for this space this year. Given what's been present with me lately, I expect to share more poetry, more about my experience losing a parent, and more experiments with fiction. If you look closely you will see how it all comes from a lens of belonging to self and to this world.
If this sounds interesting to you, I hope you will stick around. If it's not what you're looking for, I wish you well. Your attention is precious and I carry no hard feelings if you want to spend it elsewhere.
Happy 2024 friends! Thank you for being here.
May you meet this new year gently May you see yourself more clearly May you greet yourself with love And invite yourself into more More of you in all of your uniqueness Your messiness Your beautiful humanness For you are precious just as you are
How beautiful! I'm with you in the easing into the new year. I linger longer in Christmastide each year as an intentional rebellion against the "new year, new me" culture. Although I haven't made a resolution for many moons, my body still has to fight against the urgency of starting January 1st in some sort of state of a goal-infused, uber-organized, kale-smoothie-filled frenzy. The pressure to cast myself aside is no longer sustainable or desirable for me. Gentler, softer, fuller, slower, kinder. Yes, please.