AIN'T THAT A KICK IN THE HEAD?
the monthly moodboard: january
January is for the unknown. It’s for reading tea leaves and consulting the cards, for mythology and star charts, for the promise of a future ahead. It’s for fresh journals and pens full of dark ink, for taking your hair out and letting it breathe, for taking everything one step at a time. It’s for the lazy crawl from bed to bathroom, for freshly laundered towels and a new toothbrush. It’s for resetting, reloading, re-centering and re-energizing. It’s for clearing out all the junk so that something new can take its place.
January is the jump start, a shinning, shimmering, splendid silver. Ain’t that a kick in the head?
There’s a line in one of
’s reading recaps from last year that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about for months. In July, she talked about how she hadn’t been much of a reader since she left home at 16, but when she made a major life move six years later, she knew it was time to start reading again. She says:“I’d come to believe that in life there are periods of stillness and periods of movement. Seasons of dreaming and hoping and planning, and then seasons of living—of reaping the fruits of your labor, so to say. I knew I was entering a season where I wouldn’t “live” like I wanted to—instead, I’d dream and hope and plan, and for that, I'd need books.”
It struck me as such a lovely way of phrasing something I hadn’t been able to articulate myself. When you’re an adult, the ebb and flow of reading changes. As a kid, I read everything and then some, always eager to disappear into a new world, a new story. When I got to college however, it was like all the stories I’d read about were finally at my front door. I didn’t have to read about an awkward girl at a party— I was the awkward girl. Adolescence had been about gearing up— plotting and planning the version of myself I wanted to become when I struck out on my own. College was about becoming that person (or at least, starting the process). It should come as no surprise then, that despite majoring in English Lit, I read the fewest books of my life in the four years between move in day and graduation.
This winter, for me, is a season of dreaming. I have so much life planned for later this year: a big move, a big trip, my first big girl apartment all on my own. With all of this comes a need to center myself, to point my arrow. January always feels like a month where action needs to be happening; all those shiny New Year’s Resolutions we power through for two weeks before losing steam. And how could we not? This slow, cold season is for hibernation, for storing up fat and taking things gingerly, lazily, until the thaw of spring releases us.
MONTHLY INTENTIONS
Sleep. A lot. I won’t lie about it.
Use that cute new planner I bought myself and write down all those important dates I forget.
Stay inside. This is me giving myself permission not to feel bad about it.
STATE OF THE UNION
IN:
saying “no”
a big breakfast
playing the sims to induce creativity
OUT:
doing something just for the sake of doing it
stressing myself out because it’s a new year
not playing the sims because “i should be doing something better with my life”
It’s 2025, folks. How we feeling about it?
xx,
april