Blog
01/01/2026
Happy 2026! I wasn't specifically planning on doing a New Year's post on here, but considering how much I have been needing fresh starts in the past few months, maybe I should have been. It doesn't always feel so monumental, but this year, for me, it does: 2025 was intense and long and exhausting, and I'm really glad it's over, and we're at the beginning of something unwritten again.
I've been thinking about fresh starts a lot then lately - a new year (or a birthday) can be a big one, as can a new month or season, but these are all really arbitrary distinctions in time. Change can happen at any time, on any day, whenever you decide you want it to. Change can happen now - now as in New Year's Day, but also now as in a random Thursday in my parent's house at 4pm.
I think sometimes we forget just how much agency we have, just how much control we have over our lives. It's really easy to feel powerless when you're having a rough time, to feel like you can't do anything about whatever's happening in your life that's upsetting you. And frequently that's true, which sucks. But there are so many things in life that we can do something about, and I think it's important to not forget that we can do something about them, to regain that feeling of actually having agency in our own lives.
It's not always the case, but I've found a lot over the past few years that when I'm feeling like I don't want to be alive, it's actually that I don't want to be living my specific life that I'm experiencing right at that moment. I might still want to live a different life - or at least not actively want to end it. And that's a helpful realisation to have if you're feeling suicidal. Because then you can start to think about what kind of life you might want to stay alive for, and what your life could become that would make it worth living for, and remembering that the future is as yet unwritten, and much is still possible, you can start to consider how you might left there, and then it doesn't matter that you don't want to live this life, because there is a life you want to live, and you can get there.
New Year's is a great time to change things because everyone else is doing is too, and what the hell, it's a new year, it's a fresh start, or it can be, if you want to make it one. But any time is a great time to change things. If you're a teenager, maybe you don't have the freedom to do whatever you want, and if you're financially restricted, that can be an issue too - but mostly, I think it's forgetting that we have control over what we do with our lives that stops us from changing. From picking up new hobbies, changing how we spend our time, becoming part of new communities, becoming kinder, or more learned, or more musical, or whatever would make you want to live a year longer, or a lifetime longer. You can go to the shops and buy a croissant. You can join a choir. You can go outside when it's sunny and feel the sunlight warm up the back of your neck. (These are my plans for this January. I am not this person, but I can be, and if I don't like it, I can stop. I'm still kind of getting my head around all this.)
I don't know. Change your name. Grow your hair out. Learn to identify trees. Get on a train to somewhere. Sing. Change however you want. Change once and you are someone who can change, and then you can change again. There is no law that the life you're living has to stay exactly the same. If it sucks, change it. It all sounds kind of impossible in abstract, but you can just do it, and if that can change, and the year can change, then it stands to reason that your feelings will change, too.
Happy new year. I hope the new year changes you and your life as much as you need it to.