Cheers to Your New Year: Happy, Sappy, Somber, or... Whatever.

Hello my lovely friends!

It’s time to welcome a new year. Well, whether we want to welcome it or not is a personal choice. Personally, I want to thank each and every one of you for joining me so far on this journey.

Though I have maintained a newsletter for years, I was never all that consistent with it and sometimes I even felt a bit apologetic about it. I never wanted to be someone filling your inboxes with content that doesn’t enhance your life. I also had, up until recently, yet to come across a newsletter format that I really liked, and I often found myself struggling with templates, whilst enthusiastically cursing. Then I found Substack!

It’s been about six months, or so since I began writing on this platform and I am loving it. I'm loving writing to and for you, and I am so grateful that so many of you are participating.

Thank you! Your support means the world to me.

I am always open to subject matter requests and suggestions, otherwise I tend to write whatever is getting my attention or moving through my world and tickling my heart strings. Life is a bitter-sweet thing. It deserves to be put into words that can (hopefully) transcribe all of its nuances: the ache, the beauty, the sorrows, the joys, and even the unknown. It is my hope to do this and it is an honor to share my attempts with you.

New Year's eve I awoke to a sense of openness and possibility.

That state prevailed for about half of the day before I felt overcome with tiredness and lost the desire to reach out to the person I told myself I would, but also to take myself on my writer's date after work.

Computer, cocktail, and swathed in something pretty was how I had intended to wrap up the afternoon of 2022, but instead I found myself snuggled up in my cozy place (aka my bed), cuddling my cat, and before long dozing the afternoon away. This is okay. It has to be because this is what I did. But that did not stop me from lightly badgering myself over not fulfilling my commitments to myself. It also did not stop that anxious edge from creeping up.

If I had to name that night's anxiety it would be expectations. My own, my projections onto another specific person, and (maybe) the weight of the collective expectations to just wake up on New Year’s day and for things to be different because the calendar has rolled over to 2023.

My body and psyche say: What difference does a day on the calendar make?

The things I felt assured about as 2022 wound down, I still feel mostly assured about. The things that stir insecurities and uncertainty are still simmering in that pot and being broken down like a massive roast in a pressure cooker.

The Gregorian calendar ain’t got shit on our biorhythms. Our body’s cycles and the cycles of nature are far older than any man-made calendar. So, in other words, don’t be surprised if you set intentions for a new year, but feel no motivation to follow through with them for several months—until life actually thaws.

Forward movement is unnatural and often difficult during the winter, no matter what the calendar says. The plants and beasts have retreated to a state of hibernation and it is only natural that our animal bodies long to follow suit. We want to slow down. We want to reflect, tend, mend, and rest. This is the way of the natural world at this time of year.

Nothing is blooming…why should we feel compelled to?

And don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in the winter. It’s quiet, but the roots are down there riotous. ~Rumi

After a brief interlude into forty-degree weather, we are now back in the single digits. The air is bright, blue, clear, clean, and cold. The cozy places call, friendly and warm, and a comforter and oversized bathrobe are preferable attire to cocktail attire and bar-basking.

There are commitments that require attention, a business to run, a job that I must attend to, and words to be written.

There is another commitment that feels even more pressing, though: to stand in the full force of my own exquisite being, to stand in who I am and what I want, to face the feelings I typically want to run from. I don't love confrontation, and I have promised myself that I will not be the person who throws things or storms out of a room. (I once was.) However, there is something to be said for standing in what we are feeling and expressing it.

Knowing our feelings and expressing them is a skill set and one worth developing. Emotional intelligence is a necessity for clear communication. If we do not actually know what we are feeling, how are we supposed to share it with another human? Brené Brown, in “Atlas of the Heart”, defines 87 human emotions, but it is said that most people identify with three: mad, sad, and glad. That is a lot of nuance and distinctions that we are missing out on if we are missing 84 possible emotions.

Our feelings take us places inside of ourselves and in our relationships. It serves our health to develop language and awareness to be able to express them. This is a place for gentleness, patience, curiosity. It also requires exquisite honesty, which means that there is no way that we are “supposed to feel” not on the first day of the year, on any holiday, or on any given Tuesday. Our feelings are our own and though they may arise in response to environmental and collective events—they are still ours!

Maybe 2022 was a rough year and you’re still grieving and that is okay. Maybe you’re angry, maybe you’re tired, maybe you’re even a little depressed. None of those feelings are wrong. Today I am being tickled by my longtime friend—anxiety. It’s not what it once was, but a whisper and an unsettled feeling in my ribcage, some thoughts that won’t quite form for be to ruminate over and that is progress.

There is no need to add extra pressure to what can, for many people, already be a rough time of year. And there is no need to launch yourself into 2023 with a massive to-do list or endless resolutions.

The root of “resolution” is the Latin word solvere “to loosen, release, explain”. This older etymology tends to suit my mood better for this time of year, as have a hard time accessing that square-shouldered, bull-headed attitude that prevails for so many. 

So this is my invitation to you:

Take a breath or two. Feel the slow expansion of your belly and the rise and fall of your own chest. Drop your shoulders. Soften your jaw, your gaze, unclench your fingers, and stretch your toes. Press the soles of your feet to the ground or together if you like. Take another breath and…solvere! 

Lotsa love,

~Justice

Image: Almos Bechtold

Please note: A (late) New Year’s ritual will soon be sent out to all my paid subscribers.