Is New Year the right time to make a change?

The secret I have been keeping from you, rescheduling the fresh start to the first day of spring... this week's Lucy Ives book GIVEAWAY!

BOOK GIVEAWAY. We are back at it! This week with Lucy Ives and her most recent novel, Life Is Everywhere. Here is the Times Review here. This book admittedly took me a while to get into, but now I am hooked. It is about love and heartache and how lives intersect in ways that confuse and contort time. Like right now, you are existing at this moment, but also your memory is accessing so much personal history and the stories of others affect your interactions. The web is endless. Tangential and sensorial, Lucy Ives weaves tenses and thought experiments in my mind to illustrate the complexity of experience. Of life. Comment here if you would like to receive a copy, we have two to ship out.

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I have always liked a fresh start. A marker of time that is dedicated to making change. To try to be intentional about what that change should be. Since I am not a really traditionally religious person, but still take great delight in meaning and ritual, I place great importance on the new year and what that could mean for us.

Have you made a Less/More list this year? I feel like my news feed has been filled with them. Mostly, if I have taken a survey, people seem to want to spend more time connecting with people, less time being judgmental, more time exercising, less time doom scrolling… What was on yours? Did you wake up on New Year’s day with the ambition and planning required to make the changes in your life?

I woke up. Feeling guilt, even though I said that on my list I wanted to feel less guilt. And tired. And basically like I needed to sleep another 12 hours and then maybe just maybe get out of bed. This was not the fresh start I was hoping for. I was hoping to feel the energy to keep going, when in fact I felt the weight of my body being held down to the earth as if that is where it wanted to return.

The secret I have been hiding from you is that I am pregnant. I have written a lot about how I find being able to be honest with people is a luxury. That telling the truth is something that I am able to do because of my privilege. I feel like I am able to make decisions that I believe in, and am around people who support and care for me. Honesty just seems easy. Until this.