i

The dark, by all the calendars, is on the retreat now. The nights are getting shorter and the days longer, even though we cannot see it yet. Every day, a few more minutes of sunlight. Less than three months until the Equinox. We haven’t made it yet, but it’s possible to think we will make it. 

Probably.

The holidays are over — New Year’s Eve isn’t a holy day as such, is it, there’s less pain and pressure around it. My body is stepping out of holiday stress and focusing on its season of pain. The shift comes, as it does every year (why can I not remember this): the pain isn’t pleasant, of course, but the suffering has an edge of both clarity and acceptance. This is what is, this is what matters.

What matters, when I have this clarity, always boils down to two things:

1. Are the children well, safe, secure — thriving?

2. Am I writing?

After that, things can get confusing and messy, fluid. It doesn’t matter. No life needs a dozen North Stars. Two can be too much, cause sufficient conflict.

ii

It’s a lazy holiday morning and we sleep in, you more than me. When you wake up and we begin our shared day, you ask what I’ve been up to. I tell you.

“You’ve had a whole adventure while I slept.”

You exaggerate, but I know what you mean. I woke up. I wrote my Morning Pages. Then I prepped breakfast, I had a long, long (hard-earned, but that’s another story) bath, I Duolinged, I read my book, I checked in on the children, I invited friends to a gathering, I tidied. I read again.

I didn’t get lost in Instagram reels or online shopping for lovers, ever-present dangers.

“I started with Morning Pages,” I tell you. “When I do my foundation, everything else flows.”

Not 100% true. But true on this day.

Beginning the day on the page is a writer’s prayer, meditation. Unlike Julia Cameron, who introduced me (and half the world) to Morning Pages in The Artist’s Way, I don’t think Morning Pages are a panacea for all and sundry. But they work for people like me — writers, story tellers, people with busy, expressive minds. Prayer, meditation, running, exercises or even a ritualized hot breakfast may fill the same role for others.

They are the foundation on which I build the rest of my day. First, the Morning Pages, then, everything else — pleasure or work. Whenever I skip the Morning Pages and jump straight into work or play, I am unmoored for the rest of the day.

Unmoored, despite knowing what I need, I don’t give it to myself later in the day. I know writing for a while would give m the anchor I need — but if I haven’t done it first, I do not give myself the time to ground myself on the page later.

(In my first draft, I write: “I don’t find the time.” But time is not lost. It’s there. All round us. It’s not a question of finding it, is it? It’s a question of giving it — to ourselves, to our writing practice — or to exercise, to whatever it is that we know we need.)

Unmoored, I don’t give myself the time.

I get lost in Instagram reels instead.

iii

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions but I like the opportunity each new year, each first of each month, each Monday for that matter, offers for reflection and action. 

The clarity that comes with the pain that walks with me this time of year tells me I need more silence.

For the past few years, I’ve needed to fill the silence — with audiobooks and cat videos and commitments and people. No guilt or shame about it (ok, maybe a little — the guilt is ever-present). I needed it. I did it, I’m here.

But I know creative work — good creative work — needs silence.

So in 2025, I need to turn down the volume.

I’m scared. Silence isn’t actually silent. It’s full of voices. 

I’m not sure I’m ready.

But I’ll try.

And if I need Rex Stout or Simon Brett to help me fall asleep or just not think in the middle of the night, I’ll use them.

But I’ll try to use them less.

Instagram reels, however, I think I can eliminate in their entirety,

Wish me luck.

iv

On Solstice, at a writer friend’s artsy, witchy house, we write down what we want to let go of in 2025 and what we want to seed, and then burn our intentions. (Of course we burn them, how else will they reach the gods we don’t believe in?)

I want to let go of guilt — I feel so much guilt right now, in so many different forms, including guilt of not having published or finished a stand-alone work for more than four years now.

What I want to seed is private and complicated. As I’m about to burn it, I realize that in a very full articulation of what I want, I don’t touch on writing. At all. Should I have? (Guilt.) I take my pen back to the page, hesitate.

I add, “I have not written anything about writing here. What does that mean?”

(Guilt.)

I burn the intention. I carry the guilt home with me. I tell you about it in the night.

You suggest writing is such a core part of my life, of who I am and what I do, that I didn’t need to create an intention around it.

But shouldn’t I want to write — or at least finish — another book? Isn’t it time?

Guilt.

Well. Letting go of things is a process.

v

The holidays are over but the New Year is not yet here, and we’re in that in-between time during which, if you don’t have to work, time loses all meaning. My past self is bleeding and in medically-assisted denial. The ER doctor has sent me home. “Wait and see.” When I come back, it will be too late but I don’t know that yet. I wait and see.

My present self feels her pain, fear — guilt. Can’t quite turn it into art, not today. But I also know that she has done so in the past — I have done so in the past. Repeatedly. This is the pain I tap into every time I craft the Dark Moment, every time I make you cry with a story.

Today, though, I can’t craft fictional Dark Moments. But, I write. Morning Pages first. Straight from that into this, an exercise in short-form creativity, a reminder that something doesn’t need to be 100,000 words long before it’s finished. Then, a pause for exercise, which I don’t particularly want to do but I need to do. Ok. Done. Now some time with Julia Cameron — I’m working my way through Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance. It helps.

Next, check in on the kids. The eldest is working, the younger two recovering from Christmas. Do they need me? They’re not sure. We might go to the mountains or thrift store hunting. Or just chill , separately or together. I don’t mind the uncertainty — I have written , I’m at peace, I can take whatever the day throws at me. 

I can even, today, do nothing. Spend a little bit of time in uncomfortable silence. Remember how to tune out the worst of the demons that eat me and tune into the deep voices that feed me.

I will try.

The dark is receding. I will try.

xoxo

“Jane”