Circles & Revolutions | A New Year Writing Prompt
“Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.”
Image: Denis Gazik for Unsplash
New year, new beginning - that’s the message all around us right now. We have crossed a threshold, kicked the dirt of the old year from our feet and stepped through to the clean slate of a new year where the biggest, brightest and best version of you is only a diet, a planner, a skill or a new holistic practice away. For months, we have been bombarded with messages telling us to spend, indulge, let loose - be happy and joyous! Now, the script has flipped. Purge, organise, refrain, improve and this will make you happy, no, this will, and this, or this.
The new year is not a threshold, it is a logistical accident. For 30,000 years at least, human society has attempted to map the phases of nature and the passing of time. Right now there are around forty different calendars in use around the world - solar, lunar, luni-solar, sidereal, seasonal. The Julian or Orthodox New Year occurs on 14 January; Chinese New Year takes place on 10 February 2024, Diwali is celebrated between mid-October and mid-November. Our attempts to rule time are futile; we are all creatures of the natural world and subject to its cycles.
Take a look out the window. If you are in the Northern hemisphere, like me, it is likely cold, overcast, dark and raining or icy bright with reflected snow. Trees are stark and bare, their fallen leaves pulped mush on wet pavements. We are already in the middle of a slow season, where the natural world rests, sleeps and gathers its resources. This is not the time to become, it is the time to quieten, be still and reflect, to rest and wait for the light.
Hominids, our earliest ancestors, have existed for around 6 million years with modern humans showing up between 500,000 and 750,000 years ago, as scientists determined in 2016, from bones excavated at the Sima de los Huesos . For almost all of that time, human society has lived and worked in tandem with the natural world. We rose and rested with the sun, planted and tended the land in Spring and Summer, gathered food stores in Autumn, rested in Winter.
It is only in the past 250 years, a mere blink in the human timeline, that we began to shift out of sync with nature’s seasons, when the Industrial Revolution (1760-1840) changed the means, scale and commercial benefits of production. In the 1870’s, the concept of the night shift was introduced to keep the machines of industry running around the clock, the gears quickening again in the 1920’s, the age of electricity and automation, the 1950’s atomic age, the Big Data digital communication age of the early noughties and now the dawn of Artificial Intelligence.
In Vol. One of *Das Kapital (1867), Karl Marx observed: ‘Capitalist production therefore drives, by its inherent nature, towards the appropriation of labour throughout the whole of the 24 hours in the day.’ We now live in the world he predicted but humans cannot adapt at the same rate as industry and commercial greed. Ours is a dawdling evolution by comparison. It is no coincidence that the further we are removed from the natural world, the less care and consideration we have shown as its inhabitants and custodians. Will humans fare any better once our labour can no longer compete with AI alternatives?
Since my recent Autism diagnosis, I’ve been thinking a lot about the value of work, how to manage my limited energy, and how to live and create in a meaningful way that questions everything we are conditioned to believe about the cycles of production. So many of the messages we absorb about being writers or artists are based on commercial dynamics - productivity, novelty, success and scarcity. When we factor in time, we become caught up in urgency narratives that tell us we are too late, too old, too slow, are falling behind, have missed the boat.
Today, I invite you to slow down and consider the circular rhythms of your life. We do not exist solely on a linear trajectory of birth to death but in the circles of days, months and seasons. We are constantly circling back over familiar ground, meeting and re-evaluating past versions of ourselves. When the clock ticked over at midnight last night, all our comforts, troubles, pains and joys came right along with it. What cycles are in motion in your life right now? How do they chime or jar with those of the season? What ideas or questions are circling? Do they stir your imagination or do they come from external pressures and expectations? What parts of your life feel in or out of sync? What revolution would you wreak upon yourself or the world in 2024?
“The rain this morning falls
on the last of the snow/
and will wash it away. I can smell
the grass again, and the torn leaves/
being eased down into the mud.”
Read full poem at the Poetry Foundation >>>
Musical Interlude:
Writing Courses and Events:
While I’m not running a live 30-day writing retreat in January, the following are available as Do-It-Yourself options with a themed writing prompt in your Inbox every day. Use the code JAN2024 at checkout for a 20% discount.
The Winter Almanac | A Writing Journey in January
Gods & Monsters | Writing the Greek Myths & Legends
Miracle Machine | Writing the Body
The next live Wordbox course starts at the end of January and new poetry critique sessions kick off in February - more info on The Frozen World and new workshop dates coming soon.
The Poetry & Writing Submissions List
Thank you to everyone who contributed to the Christmas appeal - your donations are hugely appreciated. Unfortunately, the target of 250 donations of €12 (or the equivalent) was not reached. I haven't decided what I'm going to do about the list long-term but it's covered for the first half of the year, so a new list will be in your inbox tomorrow.
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What I’m Reading:
Wintering by Katherine May
The Raven’s Nest by Sarah Thomas
Cacophony of Bone by Kerri Ni Dochartaigh
