New Year’s Praxis

I don’t find that new year’s resolutions work for me. Over the last decade I’ve developed a slightly different habit. Over the first few weeks after Christmas I try to do a few things that I want to encourage myself to do more of in the coming year. 

It’s as simple as that. If I want to read more this year, I’ll try to sit down with a book for a while. This year it was A Man of Shadows, the first of Jeff Noon’s Nyquist mysteries. If I want the house to be cleaner, tidier or nicer I’ll do some household chores (I’ve bought some narcissi to replace a dying geranium, and entirely emptied out and cleaned a kitchen cupboard.) If I want to exercise more, I’ll fit in some walking — I pushed myself out on one of my wanders, even though I wasn’t feeling particularly like getting out of the door. (At least I got one half-decent snap to start off the year.)

2021 has been harder than usual on this front, as I was already feeling quite tired and run down in November, even before a wisdom tooth extraction went a bit wrong and I ended up on antibiotics over Christmas. But I’m starting to feel a bit better again now, so here I am, doing something else I feel like I want to do more of: writing.

And that’s where I’ll leave it for now, because the point isn’t to set big goals or do great works or create something amazing or declare your resolution to write 1,000 words every day for the year. The idea is just gently to do a bit of work that will set the scene, and perhaps head you off in the right direction.