My heart is racing at the thought of a new beginning. And yet, it’s tiresome to try again. One must, though. The alternative is not an option, not yet, not while the pain is bearable. One hopes for a silence that precedes an Eureka moment, yet the moment never comes. There’s no enlightenment, just the blind tracing of a pattern so well carved and so deep that it would take much greater minds than mine to climb out of. It’s the pits. Post-Christmas depression, looking at the world, so dark. One’s world is filled with teeny tiny lights. But the tiny lights can’t brighten the dark cave of routine and self-doubt, can they? Will a month of silence help? A year away from it all? One wonders, as one directs one’s attention to Boxing Day sales. No, not that pit. Not again. No, you don’t need to buy that off Amazon, even if it’s 60% off.

What are you doing with your life? Fill your new home, your first home as a grown-up (about time!) with stuff. Each thing you buy is another nail in the coffin of your youth, pinning you to the spot. It’s your spot though. It’s a corner of the world that belongs to you, so you have the right to fill it with stuff, your stuff. You’re an independent modern woman after all. You can afford the stuff. And yet. Why does your heart keep racing at the thought of a new beginning? Is it excitement or something else? Can excitement be mistaken for a slow and an arguably lengthy walk to the grave? Is that why one keeps buying stuff? One hopes that by sitting still in silence, even for a minute, an answer to all the dark questions might arise. “Be in the moment” is the usual meditation chant, but, for anxiety-ridden people, that doesn’t help much. “Control your thoughts”, another recommendation one might have heard from some beige-wearing yoga person on TikTok or Instagram, who will ultimately invite you to purchase a beige this and that at an attractive price.

The answer to everything is that there is no answer. We all make it up as we go along, and the nihilists may just have a point. So tomorrow when we wake up hungover from the New Year’s celebrations, can we disguise that new day into the start of something meaningful or do we just accept that nothing has meaning, because nothing ever does? In the age of social media, distraction is always the name of the game, so we forget, oh so easily, how small we really are. But the instinct of preservation almost always kicks in, at least for those of us who aren’t too suicidal (yet), and we wake up, crawl our way out of the hangover pit and move to the distractions of our daily jobs. Happy New Year!