New Year, Hate Myself

No thanks, POPE CALENDAR

Tomorrow, apparently, I must be a person again. I’ve been dipping my pale toe in personhood since Boxing Day- an email here, a paragraph there, a receipt filed along the way for the taxes that will be done at the eleventh hour later this month (this is the chic financial way, don’t worry). But for the most part I’ve done nothing but whatever I want for almost two weeks. I’ve lived happily out of time- unsure of the day or the hour, just swinging from meal to meal and film to film and book to book like a good time monkey. I’ve loved it! I needed it. I hate myself.

This is an overstatement but not by much. I’m at the precipice of routine and structure and even as I crave it, I’m very unhappy. I’ve decided everyone is either cross with me or has forgotten I exist. I’m worried I don’t have enough time for what I want to do. I worry I don’t want to do anything. I worry I’ve had too many sparkling wines, slept too many long mornings, eaten too beigely, lived too deliciously. I have made the work of January too hard and I am dreading its real beginning.

I blame the scourge of New Years resolutions for a lot of this. There’s a frantic, desperate, faux-chipper energy in the air online. Everyone is at it! Booze is being poured down the drain, leftover cheese flung into black sacks. Advertisers are putting me in a chokehold and trying to pull my trousers down, a hundred ripped influencers want to sell me courses on how to make my middle section small and hard and from the hills an unsettling whisper comes…. new year new me, new year new me, new year new me.

In the past I’ve answered the call of newyearnewme and have tried to offset the New Year / Hate Myself feeling by strapping myself to some enormous and punishing goal and aiming towards the future. I’ve gotten up earlier and earlier, stood under cold water, run until my legs hurt, read until my eyes felt cloudy, written three thousand, four thousand, five thousand words a day. It wasn’t all to my detriment, but it did almost always end with a crashing and a burning sometime around mid-Feb. It doesn’t suit me, it doesn’t feel right. Winter isn’t, and never has been, my time for new beginnings.

I have thus eschewed the Gregorian calendar on matters of openings and closings. It’s bad enough having to listen to the men alive now, without bringing a 16th Century Pope into the mix. It’s wet, it’s cold, I’ve no money, no prospects, I’m already a burden to my parents, and I’m frightened. So no, I’m not fucking doing it Greg! I’m not letting this be my blank slate. I’m not making a list of my flaws and then seeking to destroy them this month. I’m not hanging up the cheese, the wine, the lie-ins where possible, the slow use of my body, the measured pace that was so delicious over Christmas.

I want to change everything, which is why I am changing very little. I think I hate myself but really I’m just afraid of spending my time incorrectly or being left behind. So I am pausing at the threshold of 2026, ignoring the tug of IMPROVE, OPTIMISE, ALTER BEYOND RECOGNITION and resisting the impulse to barrel into this year without sense or emotional clothing, a streaker through my own life.

The period from now until mid march will instead be for gathering- gathering strength, ideas, courage, resources, curiosity. I’ll remain close to the things I know make me feel well- good sleep, limited screen time, reading books, writing here, taking long walks, talking to friends, eating colourfully, clearing away clutter- but I won’t attach a checklist or a number. My new year will begin as always, in the spring.

Magnolias on Light Blue Velvet Cloth, Martin Johnson Heade