“in the depths of winter that we currently find ourselves in, our reserves are naturally at their lowest.”
Thank you for these healing words Carmen!
I packed my Christmas decorations today because work and studies start tomorrow and I can already sense the chaos it will bring back into my life. I wish I had read your post sooner and waited a little longer. I do usually spend the first week or so of January ‘dreaming’ though instead of getting into planning straight away. I couldn’t do it last year and it didn’t feel right.
Thank you again for your kind words. I will remember to be gentle with myself!❤️
Oh lovely, I really think there’s no right or wrong and maybe while you’d have done things differently looking at the decorations in retrospect, I’m sure your initial urge is also valid.
Don’t be hard on yourself. 💛You can still dream and rest and do all that feels right without the tree, it’s just an external reminder in the end, isn’t it?
I’m retuning to work next week and January will be an incredibly busy month so for me I’m hoping my decorations will slow me down and ground me. Let’s see. Sending you a hug 🤗
Carmen this was such a beautiful read and one that really resonated with where my energy is currently at. For the last few years I’ve stopped setting resolutions, but rather chosen words for the year and created a mood board. I feel they guide me gently into the New Year without all the crazy expectations.
I’ve felt pulled to keep January and February slow this year, allowing myself to lean in further to winter (despite it being the season I find most difficult). I’m looking forward to spring and the goals I will set myself for the coming seasons 🤍
Happy new Year Jenna! I always adored your collages and mood boards. They are totally a great way, they make us feel and desire so many beautiful things, perfect for visual people, right? I also always have a word for the year. Or a few words, like I did last year. Whatever feels right.
I used to find winter really hard, I just wanted to get to the other side and never understood people who had a great time. This year is probably the first time where I can truly enjoy and not resist but lean into its magic. Some supplements surely helped but also intentional connection with the season as well as “projects” that carry me through the darker months. Hope you get to enjoy the last bits, light is retuning soon! Xx
Thank you so much Carmen, that means a lot! Yes! I think it’s the mindful intention behind the vision boards and words that really help.
Strangely, I too, have found winter more bearable this time around. I think like you said, leaning into the magic helps and knowing that winter will take her time — we cannot rush it to be over xx
I’m using Imbolc as the start to my ‘new year’ for the first time this year and feel completely liberated. For a long time I’ve resisted the pressure to commit to ‘resolutions’ but still felt an internal pressure to ‘get going’ and like I was being left behind. This piece has added more fuel to my (slow burning) fire - thank you!!
Oh I can really resonate to the fomo feeling, it’s quite a pressure isn’t it to “get going” in January. So glad to hear how social conditioning slowly means less and you can start your head whenever you feel ready! Imbolg is such a beautiful time, isn’t it?
Last year I was really sick most of February so I felt like my Imbolg only came early March. The year prior I felt so ready already late January, the great thing is, we can tune inwards and do whatever we please 😅
Happy New Year to you too, Rachel! Hope you had a wonderful first day in 2025! Isn’t this time of the year so magical, not because we renew but because we can find stillness and really enjoy the winter magic? ✨
I love the love letters idea! So much love, ha! I might do that. I try to take it easy in January too. I took the week off from work and only started up again today... slowly.
I feel so much of what you have so beautifully gathered here in this piece, Carmen. January is such a gentle and liminal time. It almost feels like I am floating, while at the same time I feel quite grounded, safe and secure in my home - and so grateful for being able to feel this way. Wishing you a lovely and simple month as you continue to feel your way forward. Blessings and Happy 2025. xoxo
I mean “ It almost feels like I am floating, while at the same time I feel quite grounded, safe and secure in my home” this feels so true to me too! It must feel extra wintery up in the north for you! I’ll be in Copenhagen in 2 weeks, curious to see what winter will be like in the nordics. Xxx
This resonated with me so much. I have been overwhelmed with all of the "New Year new me" content and it is refreshing to read something that reminds me to take things at my own pace, to be gentle with myself. My Christmas tree is still up and I plan to take it down on the 6th. I also made a book Christmas tree which I don't want to take down at all but then I need my books to read :(
Happy New Year to you too, Reema! So glad you feel similar! Ohhhh I love a book Christmas tree, such a fun idea! And totally get that it cannot be up forever, unless it’s done with school books then the inner child may never want to dissemble it ever again (no, my dog didn’t eat my homework, it’s in the Christmas tree)😂 haha sorry for the joke but I have always wanted to create this kind of tree
Carmen, your words resonate deeply with me. I've always felt this disconnect between the calendar's 'new year' and my own internal rhythms. I remember one January, I was pushing myself to set ambitious goals, but my body and mind were screaming for rest. It was like trying to force a flower to bloom in the dead of winter. I ended up burnt out and discouraged. It took me a while to realize that I needed to honor my own seasons, just like nature does. Now, I take my cues from my energy levels and the world around me. Sometimes, that means starting fresh in the spring, or even mid-summer! It's liberating to break free from the 'shoulds' and embrace what feels right for me.
“It was like trying to force a flower to bloom in the dead of winter.” - such a beautiful analogy Alexander! So great to hear you’ve found what works for you, through trial and error many of us seem to learn when to set their goals, if at all.
What a beautiful way to honor the season we're in, Carmen! I love how you compare rushing January goals to crossing the Alps unprepared—so relatable and wise. Your gentle rituals feel like such a nourishing way to start the year, especially the idea of writing love letters to ourselves for each month.
So glad you like the rituals and ideas! Thanks so much Mohika! I wasn’t sure whether the Alp crossing analogy would make sense to anyone, so glad you like it because I thought it was so fun and fitting 😅 you know when you write something and really like it but aren’t sure if you’re the only one? That’s how I felt haha
Thank you for this. I’ve always felt a little rushed to embrace the new year on January 1st. I’d much rather celebrate in March or on the Chinese New Year. I appreciate the soft intension setting and dreaming prompts.
Thanks so much for the well wishes, Milena! Happy new year to you! ✨ blessed with winter magic that makes me always feel more cozy and slow and not ready to “get going” in January
Get well soon, Carmen. I have similar feelings about January and my new year rarely ever begins until February. I prefer an Imbolc start, just before my birthday, and I love the energy of September, too ✨
Thank you lovely! Yesss 100% slow imbolg start for early gentle seeding and spring equinox time for really feeling strength and energy ☀️ spring always starts in the darkness, doesn’t it, when we can sense but not yet see things, that’s how I feel about Imbolg the magical time when light returns 🌱
Oh no, I hope you get well soon! And I love these suggestions. I threw out goal setting years ago in January (I usually start thinking more about my intentions in Feb/Mar) and it was done a world of wonder for me.
Thanks so much lovely! I haven’t forgotten about our DMs, just been a lot these past few months. Feb / March feels like our juices return somehow, right? Xx
Thanks for this, Carmen. What you have said, here, resonates with the daily, year-long blog/newsletter project about my intentions to have "365 Better Days in 2024" that I completed on New Year's Eve.
Right out of the gate, eager to get started by following a format in which I stated in the morning what my life-improvement intentions were for that day, and then reporting later in the day on how it went, I realised I had already made my first mistake... the title of the project: 2024 was a leap year (i.e., 366 days; not 365).
In the first few weeks/months I went from splashing each day's entry with checklists, charts, tables, and photographs, pretty quickly down to making a simple, short list of intentions that I then reported on at the end of the day. And eventually overcome with embarrassment at publicly humiliating myself by having to report that I pretty much never checked off all the items on my carefully prepared lists -- not even the simplest ones -- I switched to being more vague and confused about it, and speculatively philosophising about why I found it so hard to keep to what had seemed like would be a straightforward process of choosing things that should be good for me and just doing them and feeling like my life improved as a result.
I then went through a long phase of waxing poetically and lyrically (as best I could) about what was going on in my life and why I was struggling with everything. Eventually, I realised that in order for this daily exercise to go somewhere worthwhile I had to use it (the act of daily just doing *something* -- just ONE thing -- even if that ONE something was resting and dreaming) to come to an understanding how daily life can actually be improved without calling feeling like I had to make a big deal out it every time.
That's when I found more comfort in doing less, rather than more. I found minimalism. I got rid of things. I trimmed my stuff and my to-do list way down. And I found that the act of just picking one small thing to do (tear up that one cardboard box and put it in the recycling bin, wash that one cup and put it back in the cupboard, pull that one patch of weeds, vacuum that one room, make that one phone call, send in that one application form) was enough to generate that dopamine hit that often carried me forward to do another small thing. And it snowballed all by itself from there. Just one thing. Just start. Keep moving and see where it goes. Mindful. Minimalist. Movement.
What I learned from practicing these things and committing to writing something about it every day, is that it's not about getting as many things done as efficiently as possible; rather, it's about feeling good about myself while I'm doing it in the world I live in, regardless of how it goes. It's about not expecting perfection, but it is about being engaged in the life process in all manner of ways, mindfully, one of them at a time. And that it is more about making a choice to do that one small thing, every day, rather than about having a massive and comprehensive checklist and bashing through them all just because that's what the plan requires; you make a choice; everything is a choice; there is nothing automatic about it. It's like learning to sail and catch the wind to carry you along.
And as I wrote the final entry in that blog I realised (while listening to everyone else's fireworks going off, and all the hooting and hollering around the neighborhood) that 2024 had been the first year in a while to which I didn't feel like saying good riddance to it! 2024 had become the best year I've had in a long time, by being kinder to myself, taking better care of myself, and being reasonable about expectations and being mindful of the context in which everything happens. And most powerfully of all, for me, was the discovery of awareness into the actual state of my mental health, instead of how I had imagined it to be.
The context aspect of it for me was (and still is) that 2024 was supposed to be my final year of working "for the man," and retirement at the end of it. It was also my first year of being a grandpa and wanting to be able to physically, mentally, and emotionally spend more time with my amazing little grandson. And in addition to the daily blog, I originally started out with other regular writing processes that I wanted to commit to as ritual practice -- a weekly creative nonfiction essay, and editing/posting here on Substack all of the earlier rough drafts of chapters of a novel that I have been working on for about ten years -- and one new chapter every week. My goal was to post the final chapter on Christmas Day. Well, after six months or so, the weekly essays began to slide. Many of them were not so good. And I just couldn't keep up the pace and still come up with something good every week. I just had to forgive myself for that. I did do the daily blog entries 366 times, without fail. And I did finish the novel. But I still haven't been able to achieve retirement, yet, due to incredibly frustrating bureaucratic issues. So I'm still working a fulltime day job for a living... And I'm ok. I'm still making daily choices, just starting, doing just one thing and keeping moving if it feels good to do so. And... there really was no good reason to retire at the end of 2024 and start my new, retired, life on Day 1 of 2025, anyway. Mindful. Minimalist. Move on.
“in the depths of winter that we currently find ourselves in, our reserves are naturally at their lowest.”
Thank you for these healing words Carmen!
I packed my Christmas decorations today because work and studies start tomorrow and I can already sense the chaos it will bring back into my life. I wish I had read your post sooner and waited a little longer. I do usually spend the first week or so of January ‘dreaming’ though instead of getting into planning straight away. I couldn’t do it last year and it didn’t feel right.
Thank you again for your kind words. I will remember to be gentle with myself!❤️
Oh lovely, I really think there’s no right or wrong and maybe while you’d have done things differently looking at the decorations in retrospect, I’m sure your initial urge is also valid.
Don’t be hard on yourself. 💛You can still dream and rest and do all that feels right without the tree, it’s just an external reminder in the end, isn’t it?
I’m retuning to work next week and January will be an incredibly busy month so for me I’m hoping my decorations will slow me down and ground me. Let’s see. Sending you a hug 🤗
Carmen this was such a beautiful read and one that really resonated with where my energy is currently at. For the last few years I’ve stopped setting resolutions, but rather chosen words for the year and created a mood board. I feel they guide me gently into the New Year without all the crazy expectations.
I’ve felt pulled to keep January and February slow this year, allowing myself to lean in further to winter (despite it being the season I find most difficult). I’m looking forward to spring and the goals I will set myself for the coming seasons 🤍
Thank you! Wishing you love and light ✨
Happy new Year Jenna! I always adored your collages and mood boards. They are totally a great way, they make us feel and desire so many beautiful things, perfect for visual people, right? I also always have a word for the year. Or a few words, like I did last year. Whatever feels right.
I used to find winter really hard, I just wanted to get to the other side and never understood people who had a great time. This year is probably the first time where I can truly enjoy and not resist but lean into its magic. Some supplements surely helped but also intentional connection with the season as well as “projects” that carry me through the darker months. Hope you get to enjoy the last bits, light is retuning soon! Xx
Thank you so much Carmen, that means a lot! Yes! I think it’s the mindful intention behind the vision boards and words that really help.
Strangely, I too, have found winter more bearable this time around. I think like you said, leaning into the magic helps and knowing that winter will take her time — we cannot rush it to be over xx
I’m using Imbolc as the start to my ‘new year’ for the first time this year and feel completely liberated. For a long time I’ve resisted the pressure to commit to ‘resolutions’ but still felt an internal pressure to ‘get going’ and like I was being left behind. This piece has added more fuel to my (slow burning) fire - thank you!!
Oh I can really resonate to the fomo feeling, it’s quite a pressure isn’t it to “get going” in January. So glad to hear how social conditioning slowly means less and you can start your head whenever you feel ready! Imbolg is such a beautiful time, isn’t it?
Last year I was really sick most of February so I felt like my Imbolg only came early March. The year prior I felt so ready already late January, the great thing is, we can tune inwards and do whatever we please 😅
Yes, this is the season of wintering and laying low. Budding and blooming will come later. Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to you too, Rachel! Hope you had a wonderful first day in 2025! Isn’t this time of the year so magical, not because we renew but because we can find stillness and really enjoy the winter magic? ✨
I love the love letters idea! So much love, ha! I might do that. I try to take it easy in January too. I took the week off from work and only started up again today... slowly.
Love for love letters 🥰 I propose you’ll love yourself for writing them if you end up doing it, such a fun thing to look forward to!
Time ticks over from one year to another. We, however, are ongoing.
Thank you for such a beautiful framing of gently perceiving where we are, whenever we are.
I feel so much of what you have so beautifully gathered here in this piece, Carmen. January is such a gentle and liminal time. It almost feels like I am floating, while at the same time I feel quite grounded, safe and secure in my home - and so grateful for being able to feel this way. Wishing you a lovely and simple month as you continue to feel your way forward. Blessings and Happy 2025. xoxo
You always find the most beautiful words, Liz! 🥰
I mean “ It almost feels like I am floating, while at the same time I feel quite grounded, safe and secure in my home” this feels so true to me too! It must feel extra wintery up in the north for you! I’ll be in Copenhagen in 2 weeks, curious to see what winter will be like in the nordics. Xxx
Happy New Year Carmen!
This resonated with me so much. I have been overwhelmed with all of the "New Year new me" content and it is refreshing to read something that reminds me to take things at my own pace, to be gentle with myself. My Christmas tree is still up and I plan to take it down on the 6th. I also made a book Christmas tree which I don't want to take down at all but then I need my books to read :(
Happy New Year to you too, Reema! So glad you feel similar! Ohhhh I love a book Christmas tree, such a fun idea! And totally get that it cannot be up forever, unless it’s done with school books then the inner child may never want to dissemble it ever again (no, my dog didn’t eat my homework, it’s in the Christmas tree)😂 haha sorry for the joke but I have always wanted to create this kind of tree
Carmen, your words resonate deeply with me. I've always felt this disconnect between the calendar's 'new year' and my own internal rhythms. I remember one January, I was pushing myself to set ambitious goals, but my body and mind were screaming for rest. It was like trying to force a flower to bloom in the dead of winter. I ended up burnt out and discouraged. It took me a while to realize that I needed to honor my own seasons, just like nature does. Now, I take my cues from my energy levels and the world around me. Sometimes, that means starting fresh in the spring, or even mid-summer! It's liberating to break free from the 'shoulds' and embrace what feels right for me.
“It was like trying to force a flower to bloom in the dead of winter.” - such a beautiful analogy Alexander! So great to hear you’ve found what works for you, through trial and error many of us seem to learn when to set their goals, if at all.
What a beautiful way to honor the season we're in, Carmen! I love how you compare rushing January goals to crossing the Alps unprepared—so relatable and wise. Your gentle rituals feel like such a nourishing way to start the year, especially the idea of writing love letters to ourselves for each month.
So glad you like the rituals and ideas! Thanks so much Mohika! I wasn’t sure whether the Alp crossing analogy would make sense to anyone, so glad you like it because I thought it was so fun and fitting 😅 you know when you write something and really like it but aren’t sure if you’re the only one? That’s how I felt haha
Thank you for this. I’ve always felt a little rushed to embrace the new year on January 1st. I’d much rather celebrate in March or on the Chinese New Year. I appreciate the soft intension setting and dreaming prompts.
So lovely to connect over this shared feeling of wintering and when we feel ready to star a new year, Shinay! ✨
Feel better soon, Carmen! Thanks a lot for this soothing post and the great ideas it is packed with. Also loved the calm wintery photos ❄
Thanks so much for the well wishes, Milena! Happy new year to you! ✨ blessed with winter magic that makes me always feel more cozy and slow and not ready to “get going” in January
Get well soon, Carmen. I have similar feelings about January and my new year rarely ever begins until February. I prefer an Imbolc start, just before my birthday, and I love the energy of September, too ✨
Thank you lovely! Yesss 100% slow imbolg start for early gentle seeding and spring equinox time for really feeling strength and energy ☀️ spring always starts in the darkness, doesn’t it, when we can sense but not yet see things, that’s how I feel about Imbolg the magical time when light returns 🌱
Oh no, I hope you get well soon! And I love these suggestions. I threw out goal setting years ago in January (I usually start thinking more about my intentions in Feb/Mar) and it was done a world of wonder for me.
Thanks so much lovely! I haven’t forgotten about our DMs, just been a lot these past few months. Feb / March feels like our juices return somehow, right? Xx
Completely understand! We’ll continue our conversations soon. xx.
Thank you for this reminder, Carmen.
So glad these thoughts resonated, thanks for spending some moments of 2025 here with me, Jen 🤩
Thanks for this, Carmen. What you have said, here, resonates with the daily, year-long blog/newsletter project about my intentions to have "365 Better Days in 2024" that I completed on New Year's Eve.
Right out of the gate, eager to get started by following a format in which I stated in the morning what my life-improvement intentions were for that day, and then reporting later in the day on how it went, I realised I had already made my first mistake... the title of the project: 2024 was a leap year (i.e., 366 days; not 365).
In the first few weeks/months I went from splashing each day's entry with checklists, charts, tables, and photographs, pretty quickly down to making a simple, short list of intentions that I then reported on at the end of the day. And eventually overcome with embarrassment at publicly humiliating myself by having to report that I pretty much never checked off all the items on my carefully prepared lists -- not even the simplest ones -- I switched to being more vague and confused about it, and speculatively philosophising about why I found it so hard to keep to what had seemed like would be a straightforward process of choosing things that should be good for me and just doing them and feeling like my life improved as a result.
I then went through a long phase of waxing poetically and lyrically (as best I could) about what was going on in my life and why I was struggling with everything. Eventually, I realised that in order for this daily exercise to go somewhere worthwhile I had to use it (the act of daily just doing *something* -- just ONE thing -- even if that ONE something was resting and dreaming) to come to an understanding how daily life can actually be improved without calling feeling like I had to make a big deal out it every time.
That's when I found more comfort in doing less, rather than more. I found minimalism. I got rid of things. I trimmed my stuff and my to-do list way down. And I found that the act of just picking one small thing to do (tear up that one cardboard box and put it in the recycling bin, wash that one cup and put it back in the cupboard, pull that one patch of weeds, vacuum that one room, make that one phone call, send in that one application form) was enough to generate that dopamine hit that often carried me forward to do another small thing. And it snowballed all by itself from there. Just one thing. Just start. Keep moving and see where it goes. Mindful. Minimalist. Movement.
What I learned from practicing these things and committing to writing something about it every day, is that it's not about getting as many things done as efficiently as possible; rather, it's about feeling good about myself while I'm doing it in the world I live in, regardless of how it goes. It's about not expecting perfection, but it is about being engaged in the life process in all manner of ways, mindfully, one of them at a time. And that it is more about making a choice to do that one small thing, every day, rather than about having a massive and comprehensive checklist and bashing through them all just because that's what the plan requires; you make a choice; everything is a choice; there is nothing automatic about it. It's like learning to sail and catch the wind to carry you along.
And as I wrote the final entry in that blog I realised (while listening to everyone else's fireworks going off, and all the hooting and hollering around the neighborhood) that 2024 had been the first year in a while to which I didn't feel like saying good riddance to it! 2024 had become the best year I've had in a long time, by being kinder to myself, taking better care of myself, and being reasonable about expectations and being mindful of the context in which everything happens. And most powerfully of all, for me, was the discovery of awareness into the actual state of my mental health, instead of how I had imagined it to be.
The context aspect of it for me was (and still is) that 2024 was supposed to be my final year of working "for the man," and retirement at the end of it. It was also my first year of being a grandpa and wanting to be able to physically, mentally, and emotionally spend more time with my amazing little grandson. And in addition to the daily blog, I originally started out with other regular writing processes that I wanted to commit to as ritual practice -- a weekly creative nonfiction essay, and editing/posting here on Substack all of the earlier rough drafts of chapters of a novel that I have been working on for about ten years -- and one new chapter every week. My goal was to post the final chapter on Christmas Day. Well, after six months or so, the weekly essays began to slide. Many of them were not so good. And I just couldn't keep up the pace and still come up with something good every week. I just had to forgive myself for that. I did do the daily blog entries 366 times, without fail. And I did finish the novel. But I still haven't been able to achieve retirement, yet, due to incredibly frustrating bureaucratic issues. So I'm still working a fulltime day job for a living... And I'm ok. I'm still making daily choices, just starting, doing just one thing and keeping moving if it feels good to do so. And... there really was no good reason to retire at the end of 2024 and start my new, retired, life on Day 1 of 2025, anyway. Mindful. Minimalist. Move on.
Case