As a stationery-lover, I love new year. The lure of a crisp new page –as perfect as a fresh snowfall – is something I look forward to every year. But this year is the first where I’ve written a daily diary.
My 2021 diary is bloated with notes and to-do lists and is a hot mess of almost indecipherable scrawling. I can practically hear my old teachers saying with a sigh, ‘and you used to have such beautiful handwriting.’
For a long time, that sort of thinking held me back. I had beautiful notebooks hidden away in drawers that were ‘too nice to use’. I hesitated over the page for fear of ‘messing it up’. I watched videos on bullet journaling and swooned at their neatness, precision, and creativity, all the time lamenting the fact that I could never imitate it. That’s also why, The First Ethereal languished in a metaphorical drawer for a decade.
I don’t know precisely when I said, ‘sod it,’ but I must have, because 2021 was different. I gave myself permission to be messy and incoherent. I also gave myself permission to be capricious. That’s why in some places it’s a to-do list, in others, a chronicle on the day’s events. It’s full of reminders and reflections, triumphs and tribulations. In short, it’s whatever I wanted it to be in the moment. It’s a mess, but it’s also perfect.
To quote one of my fictional heroes*, ‘The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.’ I couldn’t agree more. Life is messy, unpredictable and sometimes downright unfair, but I think that I’m finally okay with that. So here’s to embracing the chaos, loving the imperfect, and doing it all anyway.
Here’s to 2022, whatever it might bring.
*Buffy The Vampire Slayer