Starting slow is still a start.
“Hit the ground running!”
“Let’s get after it!”
“Start the New Year right!”
What if starting the new year right means easing into things?
For me, this time of year is near the end of my personal fallow period, which arrives every November like clockwork and runs until sometime in early-to-mid-January.
Don’t get me wrong: I used to make resolutions, but they never held. And then I used to “start the year as I meant to go on” by cramming January 1st full of all the things I most wanted to do in whatever year it was. I chose words of the year, and mottoes, and more.
And often, by the time spring arrived, I had forgotten those things, or my goals and priorities had changed.
These days, I am more about honoring the season.
Winter is a perfect time for getting quiet, going within, and for starting to dream about what you might want to start to do once early spring makes you think about moving again.
For my gardening friends, it’s time spent with seed catalogs, drawing out how they want their garden or flower beds to be set up, and maybe a thought of getting or gathering supplies to start some things growing indoors.
It’s not time to go out to plough or till the soil. It’s not time to rush out and plant seeds or small plants (mostly—I am aware that winter crops exist, and not a gardener, so grant me a bit of grace or poetic license here). First off, that would be super hard in many places due to frost, frozen ground or massive mud. Secondly, those seeds need things to be warmer, and those tender young plants won’t survive the winter conditions.
In the same way, winter is a great time to cozy up inside and dream about what you might want to accomplish this year. It’s fantastic for things like knitting and quilting, which create warm products, and are also about being more slow and mindful, and allow your mind time to rest in certain ways. It’s great for games and jigsaw puzzles and baking and cooking things that take time, like stew, all of which also allow your mind to rest.
I mean, you have to pay enough attention to what you are doing that you can’t sit and ruminate about things you’ve said or done (or things you didn’t say, but wanted to, or things you “should” have done, but didn’t). But you don’t have to hustle or push as you do any of those things, either. It’s a calm, quiet, steady sort of energy that nourishes your spirit.
Letting go of last year
I realized over the weekend that a lot of what I’ve been trying to do over the past couple of weeks is to let go of 2023, and all the things it could or should have been. It’s yet another grieving process.
It can be a massive disappointment to look back at a year (or some other period of time) and realize that things went seriously off the rails. All the plans and hopes you had and nurtured? If you couldn’t get to them for whatever reason, then they died, basically.
You have to grieve them and release them and move on, even if some of them can be seen as dreams deferred. As Langston Hughes wrote in his poem, “Harlem”, there are a lot of options for a dream that’s been deferred. It could dry up, or even explode.
Sometimes the time for whatever idea or plan you had turns out to have passed, and now it’s something you have to let go of. Sometimes the plan or idea can still go on, but it’s just a bit different than before.
In some lucky cases, you can continue with that plan just the same as before, but it comes with the weight you’ve added to it because of your disappointment at not getting to it sooner. All the “could have beens” come along. All the “if I had done this last year, I’d be further along by nows.”
Last year turned me upside down, basically, then shook me. First my father died suddenly in March, then my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer in April, then there was all the caregiving and such until her death in July, followed by all the estate stuff.
Grief was my constant companion, starting March 5th—not just because my father died, but because all my own plans for the year were altered, including throwing many of them out the window.
My guess is that whether you had a completely wonderful year in 2023 or one that was more like mine, there were nevertheless some ideas, plans, dreams, goals, etc. that fell by the boards. Now is a good time to let them go.
One way to do this is to write to them (or to past you) on a piece of paper, and then burn it or tear it into small pieces and throw it away. It helps to also say out loud “I release you. I am making room for new things this year” or something similar.
My own letter might look something like this:
Dear Kelly,
I know that 2023 wasn’t the year you expected when it started. You were so hopeful, and finally ready to move boldly in your business after a couple years of battening down the hatches. And then everything went to hell, without the benefit of a handbasket. You didn’t get to develop and launch the programs you wanted. You didn’t get to create the workshops you thought you would.
I hope you know that you DID accomplish things, though, even if they weren’t on a list anywhere. You handled all the stuff that came up after your father’s death and created a lovely memorial service. You made it to doctor’s appointments with your mom, and helped her figure out whether to treat or not. You spent more time with her than you did at home in the months of April, May, June and July. You were there to get her hospice care set up, and to assist her when she couldn’t get up on her own, and to help manage her pain, and you held her hand as she took her last breath. And you’ve been managing the estate stuff ever since really well, despite it being a job that nobody really ever wants to do.
In the grand scheme of things, maybe all of that is more important. It definitely helps you with new skills and personal development in ways you wouldn’t have thought to ask for. And despite all that, you did keep your 1:1 coaching clients, and create some programs, and help people who felt frantic at the holidays with All is Calm, and that, my friend, has to be enough.
Now you go write one for yourself. Then let that shit go.
When you start to feel nudged toward what you want this year to be or have or contain, then you can start or continue dreaming and planning in your own good time. Because when spring comes, it’s go time. (And if you want to make resolutions and vision boards, then early March is the time for that stuff.)
