Yeah, so it’s a little late to be doing a ‘new year’ post (I can practically hear the internet screaming at me, ‘it’s almost the middle of January, wtf??’) but whilst I am a quick assimilator, I’m generally the slowest person in the room to put their feelings or even thoughts sometimes, into words.
2015 was…. how can I put this? Actually, I’m not struggling to describe it (like I said, I’m a rapid assimilator); I’m battling not to use any expletives to describe it. But what the heck. We’re all friends here, right?
In short, I didn’t really enjoy last year. Sure, there were some bright shiny spots – a road trip to spend time with some of the best people I know (one of those being a wonderful woman who may not be related to me but loves me enough to voluntarily claim me as a sister, which feels indescribably special); the discovery of some new skills; being adopted by a homeless kitty who’s turned out to be the most loving cat I’ve ever met – but on the whole, 2015 stank.
Like, really fucking stank.
I don’t know if it’s human nature or years of conditioning that leads us to believe that New Year is a fresh new start, a blank page, the chance to remake ourselves and start over, but it’s impossible to deny that feeling, isn’t it? That the world can be ours for the taking, that we can achieve our goals, that we can be better than we were.
My Wheel of the Year describes this time of year thusly:
‘I am the stillness between breathing out and breathing in. Rest in that pause.’*
And I like that, it feels natural. I can look out of my window and see that the trees outside are doing that too, taking a deserved break between shedding their leafy gowns and making new ones ready for the sunshine-y days ahead. Like the beautiful trees William Carlos Williams so eloquently describes, there is a part of me that is ‘sleeping in the cold’.
After a difficult year, resolutions feel rather like gym memberships; shiny and tempting and full of promise and good intentions right now, but undeniably underpinned with the quietly accepted certainty of failure.
So I have made no resolutions this year, no promises to myself or others. Right now, I’ve yet to buy a calendar or diary.
Instead, I am doing. I have begun my first sewing project of 2016. The fabric is ready and waiting for my second project and whilst I haven’t chosen fabric for my third project, I do at least know what it is. And this… this feels like progress. Much of 2015 had a quicksand-like texture to it, the feeling that I could be pulled down at any minute if I didn’t constantly struggle, the fear that I might be left behind if I so much as hesitated in putting one foot in front of the other.
So, like the trees, right now I’m breathing in and resting. And working on my dreams of beautiful foliage for my year ahead.
* The Goddess Wheel of the Year, by Wendy Andrew, available at painting dreams
Scrapunzel 