How is your year starting off?
Does the new year feel like a fresh beginning?
Or does it feel like another day in the continuum, with no real sense of a beginning or an end?
I rang in the new year with a lovely virus. My New Year’s Eve consisted of take-out Thai soup, Tylenol Cold & Flu tea (which, honestly, isn’t that bad), and reading All My Puny Sorrows, highly recommend if you love beautiful, rich writing.
Also, FYI, today is an official day. It’s called “Quitter’s Day,” and it usually falls on the second Friday of January, and that’s today.
Researchers who track things like gym attendance, habit-tracking apps, and goal-setting platforms have noticed a pattern. About a week or so into January, enthusiasm drops. Our fresh-start energy wears thin, real life happens, and the goals we set in late December start bumping up against the reality of winter, work, kids, sleep, and capacity.
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Personally, with each year that passes, I feel less drawn to establish goals or make lists just because the label of “January 1” rolls around. My body and mind feel low on capacity, too. I think it’s pretty common that we’re all feeling a little “holiday season” overextended.
And look at nature, she’s got it figured out. Her winter hibernation gives us full permission to opt out of “bettering” right now. Last week my 10-year-old commented, while looking out the window, “Mom, everything is dead outside.”
Well buddy, it’s not dead. It’s just taking some time for itself so that come spring, it can really show off!
