Dreaming small

Hello lovely friends, happy Sunday.

I’m always so grateful to all of you who read my weekly newsletter. When I first started writing it, I was finding Sunday evenings to be particularly empty and quite lonely. I liked writing the newsletter because it made me feel more connected to people I love, and because it felt reciprocal somehow. Sending something positive out into the world, I feel as though I’m more able and indeed more likely to receive positive things in return. This is really as simple as people telling me that reading what I’ve been writing has put into words something they’ve been thinking about, or maybe has made them feel differently about something. I’ve come to think of this little bit of writing as something like a pep-talk from a good friend, the kind that really takes you out of yourself and offers you some invaluable perspective on the things you’ve been struggling with, which I think, is just about the secret to contentment.

Of course, plenty of times I’ll be throwing out things that don’t resonate, or only resonate with a few people. But this week, I’d take a wild guess that more than a few people are feeling somewhat bleak about the cold and the dark and the pressure, on top of all of that, for self-reinvention in the pit of winter. So. Let’s talk about January, about which I have two main thoughts.

My first thought is about resolutions. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with resolutions, or a certain amount of discipline. I really like September, the feeling of buying new stationery and asserting structure. Within a certain, reasonable amount of structure there is freedom, I think. Room to grow and change and, crucially, room outside those windows of discipline to really fully relax. January, probably because of the weather and because everybody’s broke, is September’s crueller cousin. But somehow structure imposed in January feels much more miserable than in September.

Resolution-setting feels like a nice enough remedy to the mid-winter despair. Things might be terrible, but I’m about to transform. Of course, the trap I’ve fallen into plenty of times, arriving at the decision that I am ready to reinvent myself, is that I go much too big. I’m earnest at first, very quickly delusional, and then I give up entirely and slip back into old habits. I’m talking about all the usual things. Commitments to exercise, routine, healthy eating, recycling more, being on my phone less. Dreaming big feels pretty good when you’re still in the middle of the dream, but I really do believe that unhappiness sits in the gap between expectation and reality. Aspirations are important, and nobody wants to stay stuck. But I remind myself frequently that all of my worst periods of depression have emerged from the place where my expectations have been at a horrible disconnect to my reality.

But! This doesn’t mean that the chasm between the two can’t be repaired, and that you necessarily have to have no hopes for yourself or for the world you’d like to live in. In fact, I believe this chasm is much more likely to close if you commit to dreaming small, and dreaming accumulatively. For my part, I’ve long been in a trap of trying to restrict what I eat, and then feeling guilty when I indulge, so, doubling down on the indulgence to try and purge myself of guilt. Unsurprisingly, this approach has not made me feel particularly good about myself, the result is that I eat more and enjoy food much less. But I’m old and wise enough to know that a restrictive January diet will do nothing for me. So, this week I’ve cooked a couple of recipes from a very nice cookbook somebody gave me years ago which I’ve never used, in place of eating an entire loaf of bread in the form of peanut butter toast. And, believe me when I say I will congratulate myself generously for achieving this very small dream. The result is that I don’t feel that I have failed, but that I’m capable of something I had thought was beyond me. So, I dream small all over again, and I succeed again and congratulate myself again very generously. And even when I fail — which I will — it’s quite alright, I’ll try again. Dream small, but keep on dreaming.

My second thought, when it comes to January, is that despite the cold and the horrible lack of light, is that even at this time of the year, it’s important go outside. Yes, wearing as much as possible and please don’t fall over, but really do go outside even for a very small amount of time or at least stick your head out the window. The frost does look very beautiful and sparkly under the street-lamps and it will make you feel brand new.

Sending so much love, Rosie xxx