January 2024

For years, my Google calendar had a banner across all the weeks of January into February. It looked something like this:

DON’T SCHEDULE ANYTHING. DON’T DO IT! I KNOW YOU THINK IT WILL BE OKAY BUT IT WON’T! JUST DON’T SCHEDULE ANYTHING – YOU ARE GOING TO BE MISERABLE.

I saw it a lot. I saw it every time I added something to the calendar, reading that warning, feeling the sinking feeling in my gut but adding the event anyway. “Because I had to, because this is a singular opportunity, because I agreed to manage x,y,z and it just happened to fall here – what can I do?”

Pit in my stomach at the time of adding. Breakdown feeling again later when I inevitably did the thing, overextended myself and it (meaning: myself) all came crashing down. I would have to cancel other things just to recover. Which perpetually fueled the anxiety…

I’ve since removed the banner on my calendar. Not only did it NOT work (I mean, maybe it did, at least I knew what I was doing), but seeing myself yelling at myself…that wasn’t helpful either.

Even though it’s not there anymore, I still see it. I went to add all the things to my calendar this past week and saw the month. I just started laughing. The banner was still there, imprinted in my brain. Along with the memory that I’m not sure it helped any. 

Winter is for quiet, for restoration. It’s the only time our society will “maybe” let you go inward and ignore the outside world. (Good luck!) And it’s not that I want to spend the whole of winter in a cave (okay, if I could I would but that’s not happening). I just want a few quiet, simple things.

However, I’ve noticed that January has become an extension of November and December. We knew everyone would be busy over the holidays so we didn’t schedule seeing certain people and didn’t do some business so now we are trying to “catch up” in January.

I’m just as guilty. I add one friend thing which turns into adding a class (because for some reason all the classes I like are in January and they are all introvert based, which is funny now that I think about it) which turns into “well, you shouldn’t sit inside and do nothing ALL winter.” And there I am, heading for a breakdown.

Clearly, I’m not going to shut down my calendar completely like I dreamt.

So this January…January soup.

It is winter. It’s been winter since November. We have all wanted to hibernate since November (even if we all don’t realize it.) And instead we have been running ragged through these last two months with “holiday” obligations when all we all need is straight up, nothing on the calendar REST. 

No wonder we feel icky and gross in January. No wonder Spring can bring anxiety and Summer brings burn out. We didn’t FREAKING rest when the world technically says “Go ahead, you can do it, this is your time. I’ve set it up for you.” (We didn’t do it in 2020 either – same thing. Now it’s all just compounded catastrophically so we’ll see what comes of this.)

So back to January soup…

Yes, more scheduled rest. (I have found that blocking out hours instead of the banner over the calendar seems to work better for it actually happening AND not yelling at myself. Instead I just call it BLOCK or MEETING. Which has confused me a few times “Omigosh who am I supposed to be talking to?” when it really is just me meeting with me to rest.)

And yes, there will be things on the calendar that I likely shouldn’t be doing (for everyone’s health and well-being.)

And other things on the calendar that are somewhere between the above two. 

A dash of this, a little of that, a bitter herb, followed by some sweetness to balance.  Soup.

Also, I don’t do New Year’s anymore.

I’m writing this on New Year’s Eve. Though I love looking at the past year and being grateful and thinking about what I want for next year, that doesn’t happen at the end of the calendar year. (I always wondered why we only gave it a week or two between the holidays and New Year’s Day – like you can do any real self-reflection and understanding in a week when you are likely bone dry, tired, exhausted and stressed? With nothing left to give even if you tried? Or is that just me?)

I still see a few of the questions and a few of the headlines as we head toward January. I will look at the questions but I’m not doing ANYTHING until after the first week of January and usually it’s more the second week. Luckily, I seem to have curated my email and feeds with others who feel the same.

So rest, reflection, some socializing, some other stuff. 

I don’t know what I’m going to make or create in January. 

I know I’m going to add some things, take some things out (once they’ve given their flavor or maybe it was just a bad choice in the first place), maybe chop up some stuff, find something in the pantry I forgot about and add it…

Soup can be nourishing, expected, and comforting. Soup can also be wacky, unconventional and out there. 

It also can be both. 

This year – January Soup for all!

May you create your soup to nourish your life, whatever that looks like for you.