January 1
Looking ahead...sidelong.
Jan. 1
This morning I looked out the window and it had snowed a little overnight. The street was so pretty. When I came downstairs the embers were still glowing in the wood stove, so I got the fire started again easily (a good omen for the year ahead!), brought some extra logs inside, and walked out in the yard and up the block to smell the 2026 air and look for any fresh animal tracks. (Found cat, bird, and bunny tracks.) I took my camera out for a bit and took some boring photos of the street with the mountain in the background, and a really dreadful one of myself holding the camera at arm’s length. Such a beautiful morning though, so quiet, cold, and snowy.
Last night watching the ball drop with my family I had that same weird feeling I always have … like, wait! I’m not ready! Did I leave anything behind in 2025?
10, 9, 8 ….gah! Hang on! 7, 6, 5, 4 …this all feels so sudden.. 3, 2, 1. 2026!! Gulp.
The threshold of a new year … It gives me a feeling a bit like panic. It’s so sudden, and the turning of midnight happens with such precision - even though I know time is an illusion (as my daughter always points out), the way we do it in our culture makes it seem …so mechanical, so out of my control.
But, of course time is out of my control, what am I talking about?
I wonder what a New Year’s celebration was like in ancient times when it was based on the first full moon of the winter, or however we marked it way back when. I suppose it was at the winter solstice, most likely. There probably wasn’t a feeling of panic about taxes, or about the sealed fate of the past year. As a freelancer I always have the sense of closing the door on a year of possibilities - freelancing and working as an artist is like a game - the hustle, the tightrope walk of staying buoyant, seeking opportunities, it’s a bit like gambling with all the highs and lows. Then, as soon as the year ends, it’s all sealed up and done. I can’t make any changes or add anything at all. The instant the ball drops the previous year becomes encased in amber. It appears in my imagination like an old black and white photo, sepia toned. Not living. An artifact.
The way we do the New Year’s countdown in our modern world is so … systematic. Machine-like. There is no wiggle room. I bet in prehistoric ages it was more a feeling of time expanding from a center point. Or a spiraling sensation. It must have been a more gradual feeling of time passing, not one marked in hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds. In Ursula K. le Guin’s 1985 essay, “Science Fiction and the Future” she has this wonderful passage:
“We know where the future is. It’s in front of us. Right? It lies before us - a great future lies before us - we stride forward confidently into it, every commencement, every election year. And we know where the past is. Behind us, right? So that we have to turn around to see it, and that interrupts our progress ever forward into the future, so we don’t really much like to do it.
It seems the Quechua-speaking people of the Andes see all this rather differently. They figure that because the past is what you know, you can see it - it’s in front of you, under your nose. This is a mode of perception rather than action, of awareness rather than progress. Since they’re quite as logical as we are, they say that the future lies behind - behind your back, over your shoulder. The future is what you can’t see, unless you turn around and kind of snatch a glimpse. And then sometimes you wish you hadn’t, because you’ve glimpsed what’s sneaking up on you from behind….So, as we drag the Andean peoples into our world of progress, pollution, soap operas, and satellites, they are coming backwards - looking over their shoulders to find out where they’re going.
I find this an intelligent and appropriate attitude. At least it reminds us that our talk about “going forward into the future” is a metaphor, a piece of mythic thinking taken literally, perhaps even a bluff, based on our macho fear of ever being inactive, receptive, open, quiet, still.”
I have so internalized the concept of our modern calendar year, I can’t help but picture the decades and centuries kind of like a straight-edge ruler, going upwards and leaning a little to the right. The idea of linear time is such a strong habit of mind, it’s almost impossible for me to really sense it any other way, much as I try.
Occasionally I get a feeling for a more circular understanding of time if I’m doing something that keeps me deeply attuned to the present moment, like dancing, making photos, walking in the woods, driving in the car listening to music.
It takes a bit of alchemy to unlearn our linear habits of mind - some stirring of the pot counterclockwise, some impractical and time consuming things, some slowing down.
Stopping, even.
I hope each of you has a chance to give that a try in 2026.
Let’s do it together later this month in my online class The Autobiographical Lens, where we will practice staying still, in one place, and seeing what stories we discover right where we are. I hope you’ll join me!
“Beyond the facade of the familiar, strange things await us.” - John O’Donohue, from Anam Cara, a Book of Celtic Wisdom
(Thank you to Tommy Rushing for introducing me to this book!).
PS… If you’re enjoying this series will you take a few seconds and forward this to a friend? It goes a long way in helping me grow the newsletter and my work!
Lots of love to you for the New Year!
Until next time,
Flynn