A New Year seems to herald the feeling that things must change, that I must change, start afresh, that there must be a new beginning, and that it must all happen now, this minute, overnight even! I feel I am being herded into something that is too fast for me, too much, too quick, just wait, let me catch my breath let me think about it. How do I feel? What do the months ahead mean to me? Are there things I would like to be different? Is there a promise in these coming months, and if so am I in a good place to make the most of this?
I had an early spring clean New Years Eve, cleared some of the Christmas things away and prepared for New Year with a sense of satisfaction that I really had dusted away the cobwebs. I felt I was facing the right way, I wasn’t looking back, I was facing forward if not exactly looking forward. All of this was prompted not by some early New Year resolutions but rather by the smoke that still clung to our furnishings and hung heavy in the air.
The previous evening the living-room smoke alarm had warned us that the smoke billowing into the air was not normal for the small log-burner we are still getting used to, but that something was wrong, very wrong. We eventually found that a log we had stored close to the log-burner had got so warm it was actually alight and spreading its new found glow to the rest of the log pile. We were on fire. We flung windows and doors open and fanned the smoke away from the sensors. We felt very grateful to those sensors however, and the noise of the smoke alarm that drove us into action. So apart from changing the way we store our logs, I feel quite sluggish toward the idea of change, as opposed to the urgency that the start of a new year brings out in the diet and fitness adverts.
The start of a new year then, what does it say to me? Does it mark the time for a new me or a new beginning? Not instantly, no. To me January is a slow, laborious month, my energy feels at its lowest, I feel lack lustre, disconnected, cold and tired. Yet through these feelings January also speaks to me of patience, of assessment, of taking stock and slowly coming to terms with how I am feeling while thinking about where I might want to head in the months to come. Then, with January gone, something shifts and I feel there is a chance for the energy to return, a chance for movement after the waiting and planning. A new me, a new beginning? I don’t know yet, I’m still thinking about it!