The New Year Starts Here.
We’re arriving at the end of a 100-mile-long January, and people are taking stock of their New Year’s resolutions: either laughing at how badly they did, or proudly ticking things off lists. I used to sit and religiously write new manifestos and routines in the harshest of ways:
GYM EVERY OTHER DAY!!
CREATE ARTWORK EVERY DAY!!
STICK TO YOUR BUDGET!!
CLEAN YOUR BED SHEETS YOU RAGGEDY BITCH!!
One year in my 20s I inexplicably gave myself such a vicious and restrictive weekly plan I stared at the page in amusement, realising how over the top it all was. Who wants a life with no sugar?
Needless to say, this kind of brusque and rough forcing doesn’t work for me any more. Does it work for anyone, really? A few deep, slow changes in my life have led me to give myself a little more time to stretch in January, to unfurl naturally like the latent bud of a daffodil pushing up through the frozen earth. I don’t think it’s a luxury: we deserve breathing space as we enter into a new year, to give ourselves the gift of pace whenever and however we can, even if it’s just in our thoughts.
December is marked by the frantic tying up of loose ends, a flurry of obligations, both surreptitious and overt, and the strong and pervading need for rest. Most of us have time off work, and fill it up with food, family, friends. That short time, where everyone grasps at the day of the week like a fading dream, is so full of other things, we don’t get much space to actually rest. I’m not sure if rotting into a pile of Christmas chocolate watching all the Christmas specials back to back in your joggers counts? Not that I would suggest for a single second you shouldn’t do that, I’m not the Grinch.
To me, it follows that after a time of feasting, celebrating and whatever the fuck wassailing is, and after the New Years hangover recedes and the Maccies wrappes are binned, we allow ourselves time to rest and recover internally instead of forcing something to happen immediately,
January is the fallow month - a month for prepping, ploughing, sowing. It’s a time for all that underground work to start to grow and spread. The soil itself needs time to replenish, to fill up with the juices and energies of life, the dead and half-dead skeletons of things that happened in the past need to be pruned and snipped away, ready for fresh growth. Ideas and needs slowly begin to find form, unforced and unhurried. All the stuff you don’t need might magically fall away, the things you do need might start to gently appear.
Unsurprisingly, I’m being backed up by the pagans on this one - the first of February is Imbolc, signalling the beginning of spring, the beginning of the end of winter. The year begins now. Not in the cold grey of January 1st, but when the mornings start to bruise with warm light just a little earlier. When the first ugly little buds start to line up on branches, slowly preparing to become leaves, flowers, fruit. The year begins now, when the first snowdrops, or crocuses, or daffodils bravely burst a wobbly little petal into the cold air, as if to ask: are you ready? Are you ready for some colour, some freshness, some light, some life?! And, now that I’ve rested, now that I’ve taken my time to realise what should be grown next, the answer is: yes. Yes I am.
Happy Imbolc!
