Happy January - Letter #14
Hello newsletter friends!
I was hoping I'd be able to write to you about all of the writing and creative projects I've been getting into, what with all this space and time afforded to we kiwis with our long summer holidays. You know: waking up early, enjoying the early sun's rays streaming through my window, while drinking a lovely glass of cold-pressed coffee with orange juice and a dash of maple syrup (which I tried for the first time in Chaing Mai in October and fell in love with). Next I'd move down to the study where I'd start things off with some morning pages, before moving on to a blog post, and then getting in a few thousand words on my current writing project.
Hah.
While it's true that I'm not particularly busy at the moment (work dried up rather significantly last year after our government made some large downsizing demands to all departments), somehow I have managed to fill my January so far with:
luxuriant sleeping-in
more-than-is-healthy burnt-tasting coffee from our aging stovetop coffee pot
late nights reading trash
video gaming
cat petting
gardening
very little actual exercise (though I did join some friends in a weekend outing to Mt Holdsworth a few weeks ago, which was lovely)
trips to the library to return books I never read
There has been some creative procrastination. I've printed things out, stacked them on my desk, and looked through them occasionally. Told myself in the mornings, ok, today is the day you're going to get started! Told myself in the evenings, ok, well, you can do some writing once dinner is sorted! Told myself at night, in bed, well, tomorrow's a new day! You'll kick some arse then! And so on.
I make lots of lists. Organise my Obsidian home page so it looks different enough that I feel like a change is imminent. Start my sourdough again. Change the wallpaper on my phone. It feels like new beginnings are afoot.
At the back of my mind I know that once Leila's back at school and I'm faced with an empty house, I will have no choice but to get back to my desk. I was rather hoping I'd have felt the compulsion to do it this month.
But--it's January. The middle of summer, the start of the new year. A time for fresh starts, perhaps, but somehow for me it winds up being my fallow season. I garden, tidy up the study. Fold laundry. Make piles of things to go to the Salvation Army. There's an inevitable mental laundry-folding and tidying-away as well, that seems to happen at the same time. When I wake up at some ungodly hour and the coffee by the bed has gone so cold the milk has a thin layer on top, when I get up to open the door to the balcony, only to hop back into bed by the cats, when I stay up really late, knowing I can sleep in the next morning...it's a nod to the rest of the year when we are so committed to the "family routines." You've just got to have some downtime.
Meanwhile, I have a monster zucchini plant that is producing roughly a new zucchini every couple of days. Some Thai eggplants that look like they might be doing something. I have finally passed on the crate of cloth nappies that have been sitting in the small garage for ten years.
I am determined to be gentle with myself!
Once I get back to the desk you can expect some actual updates. I have some hard deadlines in place for finishing a couple of projects (the anthology, always the anthology, as well as Trash Planet and I am going to do some high-level planning for a couple of half-finished longer projects). I have some surgery planned for March but after that, if work hasn't kicked off again, I'll be back on the job hunt. I'm interested in working through The Odin Project, as a way of fleshing out my web dev knowledge.
In any case, happy 2025! Thanks for joining me here. Hope you've had a good January so far.