If you haven’t read my previous post, go ahead and do that, because it’ll hopefully give you a good insight into the state of my brain at any given moment, firsthand. It may explain why I write the way I do (or, if you know me, act the way I do). You might be surprised. You might not be. You might have already diagnosed me. It’s 2025 and everyone’s autistic!
Back when I was a teenager spending as many free hours after school as possible carefully curating my Tumblr, I had this stupid Confucius quote seared into my brain a little more each time I created a new post (and, for an angsty teenaged youth, this was often).
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop”
Happy new year! It’s still appropriate to say that, right?
January is grey and bleak. You’re broke, fat, depressed, and severely conscious of how far away you are from whatever goals you set 365 days ago, and the 365 before that. You can’t fathom where the entire previous year went; it all feels like a blur that passed you by far too quickly, and you’re desperate to go back in time to savour each and every minute you let waste away. But you can’t.
Cue the blues.
This is a feeling that, sadly, escapes almost none of us. No matter how fully you have lived, no matter how happy you are with how you spent the year, you’re always left with that gut-punching feeling of time is slipping from me. It’s painfully obvious that there’s only one solution to this, because unfortunately nobody has come into possession of Bernard’s watch:
Make the decision to live slowly and more consciously.
You can’t go back and relive those precious days, but you can do something with your newfound self-awareness. I like to think I do this already, but, in my desperate attempt, I actually end up doing the opposite.
My mind is always going at a thousand miles an hour and I wring my days dry until I’ve squeezed out every minute. The result is that I don’t feel like I’ve truly been living; I’ve simply ticked a lot of boxes off my to-do lists. In trying to be productive every day, I’ve ultimately made a full time job out of living in which I must fill a quota in order to be satisfied with how my day went. Wake up. Go to the gym. Go to work. Read this many pages. Go to the park on that day. These days don’t add up to a successful period of living: they are confined to what they are, which is a day of robotically doing things I pencilled in just to feel like I am making use of my time. I need to stop clocking in and out of my life and just live.
I am obsessed with poring over my calendar to make sure every waking minute is filled with useful things — but I don’t want to just have useful days. Those aren’t memorable. Reading and writing and a hundred walks through Richmond Park are not memorable; it is not the act itself that we remember, but the memories we attach to them. It’s the lessons in strength and perseverance that hundreds of characters have displayed in varying ways, it’s learning how to get our thoughts down on paper in creative ways, it’s when we stepped ankle deep in mud to get close to the deer and had to put our shoes into plastic bags before getting into my car. My point is, you should be living life and relishing both the ups and downs rather than letting it pass you by.
The way you do this will be personal to you. You should know how to ground yourself, you will know what makes you feel present and alive. It doesn’t have to be something monumental; it could be as small as sitting outside for ten minutes a day or as big as spending a weekend swimming in the ocean every month.
Despite the incessant moaning and groaning of English Folk (read: Londoners, mostly) on the odd super cold day, I actually feel like winter has been quite forgiving so far this year. In fact, I admit I’ve woken up some mornings saying ‘Hey. You know what? I could go for a walk today because it’s so crisp and delicious outside!’ And, though my nose feels like an ice cube, I am content. I seem to have foregone the usual bout of SAD this year, though I’m unsure if that’s partly because of my recovery time off work.
Nevertheless, winter, to me, is a time for doing almost nothing outdoors except the bare minimum. Yes, the Christmas markets are up and running, enticing us to leave our cosy homes for promises of a bustling, vibrant atmosphere that includes Mariah Carey playing much too loudly on a speaker nobody can locate and a £7 hot chocolate that we could have made at home without being sardine-packed on the Piccadilly Line. But what else is there to do outside this cute, expensive little activity?
There is many a festive menu across all restaurants, and enough limited martinis that now have a generous sprinkling of icing sugar snow dusted on the side of the glass. We’re being reminded that, actually, there is a lot to leave your house for, guilted into staying indoors instead of venturing into the cold. It’s December and I haven’t even been to any Christmas markets! Or the outdoor ice-rink! I haven’t been to see a single flashing light and I’ve missed Winter Wonderland, a heaving extortionate waste of time that I now have to pay and queue up for!
So anyway, I’ve thought about the winter goals I have that don’t necessarily mean doing festive things because, truly, I very much enjoy the weather that forces me to stay indoors. What a shame, I can’t go outside, it’s raining. Damn it. Actually, I’m blissfully happy laying in bed with the lightbulb red, asking Alexa to play metal while I write, so I can really feel like I’m in a dungeon. Can’t do that when it’s sunny at 8pm.
I would, on a normal day, like to have some mulled wine and chestnuts, but it’s not something I’m going to pen down and venture into the crap weather and ginormous crowds for; don’t get me started on Christmas crowds because I’m exhausted just thinking about them. There are plenty of indoor and introspective goals to be achieved in Winter, especially for an introverted dopamine-chasing hermit who absolutely loves their own company and will look for any excuse to stay indoors.
Here are my five winter goals. Let me know if you have any of your own that I can draw inspiration from!
Is the relentless rat-race becoming too easy for you? Do you need to shake things up a bit, take things up a notch, show that you really love to face challenges? If full blown exhaustion is your goal, follow these eight steps to make sure you really empty the tank of all it has!
Set aside some time to plan your work week on Sunday
What better way to make sure you’re ready for the work week than to go through all of your work tasks before you actually start? If you say no to spending time with family on Sunday, you can use your free, unpaid time off (of which you have two days – plenty!) to get a head start and make sure you’re raring to go at 9am the next day! Surely you can’t expect that planning for work would be part of your work hours?
Say yes to absolutely everything
Can you take on this task? And that task? And this task is too much for your co-worker, can you help, even though you are drowning under the weight of your own task list? Of course you can! If you don’t have time to do it, simply find the time. If you want to be a good employee, you must say yes to everything before someone else does. You might not be compensated, but at least you can look in the mirror and say you did it! Read more
The evening went amazingly well, even better than your week of fantasies thought it would; each night of charming conversation from the moment you swiped right all culminating to this very moment, the way God intended. A candlelit dinner ending in laughter over wine and a shared tiramisu, a walk along the river with his hand on the small of your back; you exchanged stories about your youth, he told you his mother would just love you. The chemistry is off the charts and you can’t wait to go home all giddy and starry-eyed.
Now you’re in his car. And he’s rapping.
The fire has been blanketed and you’re dryer than his mouth during the five minutes he’s spent delivering rhyming couplets to you and you’re looking for a swift exit. You’re too gobsmacked, too stunned to ask him why, why are you subjecting me to this? so you endure until it’s time to go home and get back on T*nder.
Unfortunately, it will most definitely happen again. Fortunately, you can keep these tips handy for the next time you’re trapped behind the bars of an unwarranted fire-in-the-booth session. Read more
I like to think there are other people like me. People who get ferociously, terribly, horribly angry whenever their time is wasted in any way whatsoever. A minute in the real world is an hour in the world of someone who meticulously plans each and every segment of their day, right down to fifteen-minute increments. At 05:30 I will wake up. At 08:15 I will read, at 17:45 I will change my bed sheets, at 21:00 I will be in bed with a candle flickering and Alexa playing Last Hope by Paramore… and so on, and so forth. Is this normal? I’m not sure.
Some might call it obsessive, some might call it insane. Some might say it’s perfectly normal to want to squeeze as much from your day as possible, considering how fast time is slipping us all by. I am obviously of the latter; planning my days so carefully allows me to feel like I have control over my life. I never, ever go to bed lamenting over having wasted the day or week, and it’s simply because I have done everything with purpose. Even the useless things. Maybe it’s boring or too grown-up, maybe it leaves little room for spontaneity — but I do consider last-minute plans. I am definitely down for an impromptu trip to Franco Manca, I just need to consult Outlook and move my Sims block elsewhere.
