Hi friends, and Happy Holidays!
That phrase makes me think. I looked around at people I was close to this holiday season and noted that for a lot of them, the holidays seemed to involve catching up on happiness they don’t get to enjoy the rest of the year—from seeing family to seeing no one at all. It makes me curious about what “happy” looks like for us. I’m someone who’s delighted by tiny things (and will equally be taken out by tiny things—ah, sensitivity; but I wouldn’t have it any other way) so I enjoy happiness a great deal of the time.
If, however, the holidays are about curating happiness as a temporary condition, I’d say that my focus is more on ensuring the absence of things that make me unhappy than binging on the things that make me happy. After all, it is very easy to make me happy, and I try to live that way as much of the time as possible. The holidays, though, are rife with potential for misery-making—so much forced activity, stress, obligation, noise, and chaos are a sure way to tank me. So, for me, staying happy through the holidays is more about insulation than pursuit.
And I did just that. I didn’t go anywhere this Christmas. Instead, my sister-cousin came to me—and her agenda was to do absolutely nothing, something she hasn’t had the luxury to do maybe ever. I was more than happy to welcome her into my cocoon of inactivity, and this morning I waved her back off to her demanding life with a week of rest to keep her going for probably another year. Meanwhile, self-soothing is seeing me into the new year—while tempted by invitations for fun times on the 31st, this year I find myself concerned not with what I’d like to do tonight, but how I’d like to feel tomorrow. And this year, more than any other year before it, I want to start the year feeling as good as possible. Not because I think I’ll feel good—but because I don’t want to feel bad.
If this sounds intolerably virtuous, rest assured that I wake up many mornings feeling bad. Not because I had a heavy night; indeed, because I don’t need any help to feel bad. It just be like that sometimes. For the first time recently, I acknowledged it without berating myself and I intend to go into 2023 companionably in hand with this beast that sits on my chest many mornings, with the intention not to feed it. My depression is a self-sufficient, independent woman—she doesn’t need any help from me! She can take care of her damn self while I take care of me.
For now, I’m writing at the bar of my favourite local restaurant where they always take amazingly good care of me. I’ve moved on from coffee to pét-nat—I’ll get my bubbly out of the way early today. Did I imply I wasn’t going to drink at all?
Two of my biggest takeaways from 2022 are responsible for my state of mind today:
Paying attention to my body
Something I think about a lot is how when my nephew is playing, he will suddenly stop and say, “I’M THIRSTY I NEED A GLASS OF WATER.” And he will down a glass of water, make a loud smacking and sighing sound, and then loudly announce, “OKAY” and resume playing.
I find this amazing. I marvel at his ability to recognise his own bodily cues. And now sometimes, when I’m feeling out of sorts and can’t put a finger on what’s wrong, I will think, “Do I need a glass of water..?” and lo, I did. It was exactly what I needed, and then I am fine again.
The solution is not always so simple (but really, it is alarming how often it is) but it makes me wonder when I became so disconnected from my most elemental needs. When I’m feeling off, rather than checking in with my basic bodily functions, I default to an assumption that whatever is bothering me might be some bigger, more significant, issue. Like existence.
That speaks to another tendency I have—always needing to understand why something is. My curiosity is one of the best things about me, but I’ve also found that my overwhelming predilection for finding answers is not necessarily helpful. Not everything has, or needs to have, an explanation or is my problem to solve. Unless a glass of water or a snack will do it.
Choosing my feelings
What does my best life look like? Honestly, I don’t know. I have a vision that keeps changing. The job I want, where I live, how much money I have, what my partner is like, whether or not I want to be married, whether or not I want kids—these variables are as nebulous as I am fickle. The thing that doesn’t change, though, is how I want to feel. I have always known that I will know what is right for me by how it makes me feel. And I think that the way I’ve tried to find the right things has been by going after what I think I want and then judging it by how it makes me feel.
This year, I shifted to the reverse: by articulating how I want to feel and consciously choosing that every day. It’s been an interesting exercise: I have, indeed, found that by choosing my desired feelings first, what I need is much easier to recognise when it is in front of me. And it often surprises me and is not what I would have thought to look for.
My core desired feelings are ease, freedom, and peace—you might be unsurprised to hear that anything that isn’t these is very easy to recognise and reject.
I’m going to keep this annual sign-off short and sweet. I’ll leave you with some things that brought me much joy this year:
Books
I became a fan of Madeline Miller this year—apparently later than many people. I read Circe first and loved it so much that I put off reading The Song of Achilles for over six months because I was sure there was no way I would like it anywhere near as much. Well, if you were one of the people on a train to Marseille who saw me bawling into a paperback, you would have witnessed me changing my tune. Miller’s retelling of the myth of Achilles, narrated by his companion Patroclus, is now one of my favourite love stories of all time. I’m weeping anew at the thought of it.
Music
I think I listened to more music this year than I have in the past five years combined, which reminded me that there is a direct correlation between how much joy I feel and how much music I listen to. This was the year I rediscovered mixtapes, which I’m told we call playlists now. I used to make these when I was a teenager but have been lazy as an adult—piling all my preferred music under “liked” tracks on Spotify for years, with zero curation.
That changed after a brief relationship with a DJ and musician this year who reminded me just how much I love the music I love—not the music they play in Berlin, nor any of the music that’s populated the charts for the past twenty years, but the music they made when they used to make good music. (I said what I said.) After that relationship ended and I could no longer share that joy with him, I started making my own playlists—and sort of didn’t stop. I can recommend Seratonin, Decompress, ハウス (House), and Truffle. I made this one for my queens and listen to it a lot; this is an excellent sexy time playlist (to the dude I briefly-whatevered who follows this playlist: fuck off). You can find these and the rest here.
I wrote this on New Year’s Eve of all days expecting that everyone would have better things to do than read it, but it didn’t feel right to end the year without signing out in writing. I have always done this for me, so I’m always amazed and incredibly touched that you read it and take the time to respond. And to those who subscribed this year, my deepest thanks—you’ve not only encouraged me but supported me. The journey hasn’t looked the way I thought it would, but I guess that is what the best journeys are about. Thank you for being here with me.
I wish you the best new year and an incredible 2023. We’ll be in touch.
Happy New Year,