Notes on January

Published on Substacks in January 2025. 

I can’t tell you why, but January feels unnecessarily deep. There are emotions pushing out of every pore. It’s uncomfortable below my skin, like a pressure cooker on the highest setting. You know, the kind of emotions that leaves you no choice but to sit down and feel them all, raw and unedited.

It’s not comfortable, but the Demons don’t win here anymore. My 2025 subscription came with a zero tolerance policy for self-abandonment.

It's bitter sweet. The pain and the sensation that the capacity to hold myself through all these stages is increasing. Maybe that's what they meant when they told us the fable of growing-up. You’ll just be more of everything. More sad. More fulfilled. More complex.

Oh January 2025,
You're heavy with unresolved emotions and unwanted breakthroughs to years-old questions. Maybe we will realise now that you were never meant to kick-start 365 new attempts at this thing called life. You were meant for hiding far away in a blanket fort with good books, and slowly decluttering all the spaces holding self-worth issues.

So I sigh out and feel the pain. At least, when I give into them, the tension of resistance goes away. It’s like a deep sigh and for that moment there is peace again.