It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life

And I'm feeling mainly good, but also mildly apprehensive

Happy “THIS is the planner that’ll change my life” day to all those who celebrate! To everyone else, happy new year!

I’m excited to be poised at the beginning of January, with all its untold promise and excitement, but wow, do I love those last few days of December too. Not only does time lose all meaning, to the point that nothing counts and you’re like “who’s in charge here? Am I being governed under maritime law?”, but also the shiny hope of a brand new year looms just ahead and you get to spend a truly self-indulgent amount of time contemplating how you’ll be a better person in it. I think I enjoy the tail-end of December so much because it combines two of my absolute favorite things: slothfulness and rampant list-making. When else do the two ever intertwine?

[Nobody sums it up better than Mr. Nathan Pyle. I have been a living embodiment of this cartoon this past week.]

As usual, I did about half the things I said I wanted to do in 2024. Did I take up tarot? I did not. Did I plant the area of the yard I wanted to fill in with native, drought-tolerant grasses? I did not. Did I make a yearly photo book? Listen, I have had that on my list since my first child was born in 2013 and I have never done it. Every year, I’m like “well, I could still catch up! My kids aren’t that old!” and then every year I don’t catch up, my kids get older, I still don’t do it, and it becomes harder and harder to want to wade through the cloud for decade-old pictures and arrange them in an elegant yet chronologically appropriate format, you know? I have eleven years to catch up on at this point, which is eleven books, which is a lot of books, and maybe it’s time to just admit defeat.

But there are a lot of things I did do! It would be boring to list them all, obvs, (“Discovered the key to making homemade pizza taste really good!” “Deleted Instagram for large swathes of time!” “Stopped buying dresses with a smocked bust because they do nothing for me!”) but I am proud of some of the bigger ones, like attending Bread Loaf and conquering my own personal white whale, being published in The Cut. (Re: deleting Instagram, I got nothing because I always eventually caved and re-installed it again, but re: the homemade pizza, you have to take the dough out a few hours before you want to eat, shape it into two rounds, and let it prove in a big floury bowl in a warm space. Game changer! So much easier to shape! So many opportunities to do Paul Hollywood impressions!)

I read a lot of great new books (a separate post!) and made a lot of great new recipes and became a brand new auntie (my brother had his first baby!) and gave a maid of honor speech (my sister got married!) and spent a lot of time in places I love with people I love. I also decided that 2024 would be the year I became one of those people who understand how to use credit card points to travel, and I joined a truly frightening number of Facebook groups so I could really go all-in on learning about it. What a hobby! Perfect for someone like myself who enjoys both the thrill of finding a deal and the cathartic repetition of hunting for it. Cannot tell you how many hours of my life I wasted this year on sites like PointsYeah, but I did eventually find some amazing tickets for next summer and I look forward to constantly reminding my husband what a steal they were, THANKS TO ME, until we leave for the trip, and probably during and after it too!

Today we are taking down the Christmas tree, which always feels a little melancholy, and playing a family game of pickleball, which my children are already arguing about, two hours before we’ve even got on the court. In keeping with tradition, I’m also making Hoppin’ John from this cookbook my mother got me a few years ago, the kind of cookbook you want to just sit down and read like a novel.

Tomorrow I’ll start thinking about resolutions, although I already know the general shape of them: write every day (even if it’s just a few sentences), move my body every day (even if it’s just for a few minutes), and help someone every day (an idea I got from Stephanie Harrison, founder of The New Happy, who I interviewed for this recent piece about how focusing on others can make for a happier new year.)

I hope the first day of January has been calm and peaceful for you, and that you get everything you want this year. That new planner will be the one that changes your life, I just know it.