It’s the first day of 2024, as I’m writing.
This is the first New Year’s Day, preceded by the first New Year’s Eve, in many years where I didn’t spend any time reflecting, tying up, or planning ahead. I just moved (homes) this season (I heavily do not recommend moving when it gets dark at 4:30pm) and spent the last week trying to finish unpacking enough to have company this weekend. Everything has been really busy, and really good, and stressful, and new, and just a lot.
My partner and I had friends over on NYE. I remember standing in the bathroom at 11:30pm, realizing that December 31 was about over. I realized had a little time left, if I still wanted to journal or something—to duck away for five minutes and tell myself I had wrapped up the year by writing the spell of “this is ending and something else is beginning.”
I took a few seconds and decided against it. I went back to my friends and midnight arrived, and it was nice.
After my friends went home, I was lying on the couch looking up at the ceiling. Feeling grateful for the lovely and interesting ceiling over the home my partner and I are creating. Noting a peace about having not had the time to care about exactly what this moment would look like or mean.
I really like narrative. I am never sure if it is grounding me or putting distance between me and the present; I know it’s probably both. It usually feels important to me to take any moment of potential reflection to do it—any opportunity to turn a page, close a season. It puts me in context, of the world, of my world, of myself.
I already have been doing that, though. My life has been in a really beautiful transition. I feel like a lot is coming together, and regular stress is keeping some superstitious fears of catastrophe away.
After a lot of thought during this time—about this move, my birthday, and how moving has impacted my relationships, with my partner, my friends, my sense of having neighbors, my rabbit—I just don’t feel like January 1st is the switchover part of this season, for me. Time has been passing, meaning has been formed and I didn’t have to make it on purpose.
So last night, I could just stare at the ceiling and visualize this night as a snapshot of my life.
The more I have been able to live and engage with people, craft my actual life, the less I have had to craft my story.
I still love reflection—I’m doing it right now—but it was very nice to just exist on a New Year’s Eve.
January Thoughts:
New Year’s Day is Actually a Holiday, huh?
Time for Soup, Season for Rest
Family Ball of Yarn
Art time Art Time
New Year’s Day is Actually a Holiday, huh?
I didn’t used to celebrate New Year’s Day at all. It has always just been the day After. After the big wind up of feelings, the late night. I haven’t often been hungover, but it always feels like a hangover anyway. Even when I was a kid—the winter sun too bright after focusing so hard on the night time.
My partner is Japanese, and I learned through them that New Year’s is the biggest holiday of the year in Japan. There's a lot of elaborate food preparation and then a lot of rest.
That is not how I have experienced New Year’s. It was always just the Eve, where you in fact eat pretty poorly, don’t sleep enough, and then harshly move on to the next days, weeks, and months until something else happens. The climax of the previous year rolls into Expectations.
Since this is the first year I’ve lived with them, this was the first year I actually saw all of the prep (and helped…some). This is the first year I felt involved, and like this is now the way I celebrate New Year’s too.
We did stay up late, and didn’t sleep enough, but today was sweet and full of people. I feel emotionally rested. I am aware that it is not time for Expectations, it is time for soup.
Time for Soup—Season for Rest
I got a positive little yelp from social media to remember this is a weird time for Resolutions and trying to be different. I agree. It’s cold and dark. We’re sleepy. Really, gonna start exercising suddenly? It’s freezing out.
I think the idea of “oops I just remembered how I think I should be” and shame-fear-awkward-laugh motivating ourselves has always felt kind of cruel and ineffective to me. I’m proud of believing that very early in life and hanging on to it. I have almost never made resolutions; I have made goals, and last year I did resolve to see my friends more. That was just a reminder of a priority, and a sweet soft thing to do for myself. I did do it, too—I saw friends way more, culminating in moving closer to some of them, having a living room to host in again, and making a lot of plans every week since I got here.
Having a reminder to look at priorities makes sense to me; like I said, I love moments of tying up and closing seasons.
I do think though, most of what we need in the middle of winter is sleep. Make some soup. Cozy up early if we can. Imagine lovely places and see lovely people. If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, this is not the season to Get Motivated.
Alternatively, I can see the benefit of finding motivations to do things—I know we can also get sad or SAD in the winter. Changing ourselves though…I don’t know, maybe in April.
It’s been chilly long enough I’m starting to gently yearn for Spring. For some reason my body temperature has started shifting, to where I am very sensitive to cold and less devastatingly sensitive to heat; because of that I’m starting to want all the seasons. Enjoying summer means I want it to happen; Spring is bright and wet, Winter is cozy, Fall is a beloved blanket of color and relief from the heat.
I’m excited to have a cozy winter. I’m gonna link some soup recipes and thoughts at the bottom!
Family Ball of Yarn
Family has felt like this tangled ball of yarn for a long time. I have gone in and out of wanting to connect with my family of origin, and of feeling like it’s reasonable to call other loved ones my family.
That all used to feel very stark. Yes/no. Surface-simple.
These days family doesn’t feel like that. Which feels more sustainable than any other version of family I’ve had. I’ve been looking at yarn a lot, and I often can’t really tell where the end is, and I don’t understand how it’s all connected—even the perfectly organized balls of yarn. I think in the past I have been really unsettled when family feels like that—like I expect it to just be a set of lines of string next to each other.
Having just done The Holidays, I’ve been focused on how it feels to interact with the people I love and the people I’m connected to. As I get more clarity about my own life and how I enjoy spending it, I am less distressed and confused by family. We are all navigating a web of our connections.
I enjoyed spending holidays with my partner and their mom, and our friends, and calling and texting other friends and members of my family of origin. I’ve liked joking the rabbits are our children. I can imagine family meaning a million things.
Two of my best friends also got married this summer, and that shifted a bunch in my mind about family too, which I’ll probably write more about later. I see family changing shape all the time now that I’m in my 30s and more people I know are married, navigating parenthood, getting divorced, moving great distances, etc. At the moment, all I want is intentional time with people I love.
The idea of family might not get less tangled over the course of our lives, but it maybe gets more comfortable to not know exactly where the ends are.
Art Time Art Time
I’m just very excited to have art space at home. I have been collaging and writing and making earrings. It’s been feeling possible to have a full time job and also rest and also do art. And also bother my rabbits.
That is all.
Rabbit update:
I put some (of his normal abundant) hay and one treat in this bag and Tilly enjoyed it for a week. Here he is, consumed with the need for hay crumbs, wedged between the recycling & trash can in our office. I love him so much. I was so glad to keep him entertained last week!
SOUP:
I love making soup!
I am currently at this exact moment eating this soup: Ozoni. I didn’t make this one, my partner did, and apparently the one I’m eating is a family recipe, but “the one on Just One Cook is good.”
I have a slow cooker and an Instant Pot. I don’t understand the Instant Pot and it hasn’t gone great so far; my partner’s mom recently gave me some books and I am now studying the tool. I am told you can make cake in it??
The crockpot I am familiar with though; my mom used to make stews in them all the time when I was a kid. So even though I have the Instant Pot, I am not planning to get rid of the slow cooker, because it’s nostalgic. I like to make a potato and carrot stew.
I really like this Minestrone recipe. I made it once last winter and got so attached. It’s got so much in it. I freehand it now and always put too much pasta, so it ends up being soup for the first round of servings, and then eventually just pasta as all the liquid slowly gets absorbed. It’s good both ways!
CAKE:
I made this cheesecake recently. I think I didn’t blend it correctly, because it ended up a little too cream-cheesy and not sweet enough. It has a good rating though, so I think it is probably pretty good if you actually make it right. I wish I remembered which one I used a few years ago when I made this one:
I choose all recipes based on:
What does the picture look like? Do I want to eat that photo right now?
Do I have the ingredients/time/am I willing to acquire?
I think it may have been this one, since it’s called “easy cheesecake” and looks familiar.
I think I want to try this one next. Strawberry cheesecake sounds so good.
Let me know if you try any of these or have an amazing go-to.
I have also been told you can make them in the Instant Pot and I might owe my partner’s mom a review of that one.
I would love to hear your New Year’s and early winter thoughts! You can reply to this email or comment:
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