The January panic
New year! New you! Quick! Do everything!
The air is like used bath water. I sweat through three shirts a day. I’ve lived in South-East Queensland my entire life, but this heat cuts deep. It touches my lilly-white ancestors and chases them back home to snowy England. My soul attempts to leave my body in the cascades of sweat that pour down my back.
I’ve thought a lot about what to write this week. I started writing a piece about TikTok and then about safe spaces. Then I logged on this morning and found out Substack has a ‘Nazi Problem’ (they’re not kicking off proliferators of hate speech). Are my little handful of subscribers desperate for outrage and moral psychology from me?
I also listened to an Elizabeth Gilbert interview this week where she talked about her Substack. Every week, she ‘channels’ a message from an entity she calls ‘love’. I attempt this, and it’s beautiful but too vulnerable to share here. Do my readers demand some extraordinary spiritual transcendence every week?
The most honest piece of myself I can give you is that I don’t know what to write. I’ve struggled this week. This week’s been hard.
You ever feel like the world’s going to end when you’re eating gyoza? Or when you’re walking through a shopping centre, and they’re playing Matchbox 20 on the radio?
My stomach hurts. ‘Your gut is probably out,’ my wife surmises. She is usually correct about these things. Anxiety from nowhere and tummy pains would reasonably mean a gut problem.
I take a probiotic.
But has the anxiety come from my gut and infected my head? Or vice versa? Chicken? Or egg?
I am anti-resolutions, and I am pro-rest. And yet:
It’s mid-January. Daily, I berate myself for not writing enough. Not doing enough exercise (I avoid the mirror these days). Eating the wrong food. Not relaxing enough. Not working hard enough. Not planning enough. Not getting a haircut. Not shaving my neck. Not planning out my blog efficiently. Not reading enough.
I can’t tell you how many cold washers we go through in this house.
Cold washers fix everything. Tired? Grumpy? Headache? Give the kid a cold washer and sit them under the fan—Australia’s penicillin.
I applied a cold washer to myself, not the kids, only late yesterday evening.
I wipe my forehead. Firm and gentle.
Then I pause. What else am I supposed to do?
I think of the sweaty Southern lawyers in historic American films, patting themselves on the plantation or in the courtroom. I dab at my neck.
Jesus, that’s good.
I apply it directly to a pulse point. Everything loosens.
I wrap it around my neck. I melt.
When I sit at the computer to write, it’s dawn on Monday morning. I try to channel the spirit of Liz Gilbert. Or love. Or my higher self. Or something.
What do my readers want to know?
It’s a new year, but nothing’s changed. You are not a new person who can suddenly accomplish everything you think you desire. There is no #newyearnewyou. If you need longer to rest, rest. Be still. Watch the grass grow. Listen to the birds.
You do not need to solve the Middle East today. And you don’t need to work out the perfect diet plan. Your only job, every day, is to ensure you are nourished and full and able to share a little of what’s on your plate with those next to you.
Sleep in a little longer.
Rest a little deeper.
Things take the time they take.
You don’t have to do anything to be perfect. You already are.
Thank you for this. Very needed.