what my brain is like on the verge of 2024 🧠🪩✨

thoughts on the new year, good habits to bring into 2024, and steadiness

I love New Years. I love beginnings, spiritual thresholds, the idea of starting new and starting fresh. The opportunity! The possibilities! I begin my new year transition the day after Christmas–this in-between week is the perfect time to get introspective and cozy up to envision the year ahead.

But I read something this week that changed my mind: the idea that January is actually the worst time to shift into this whole new year, new me, lots of energy, lots of change vibe. By our modern calendars, it makes sense–but if we listen to nature, it doesn’t.

Right now, nature is in a period of deep rest. It’s hibernation season. We’re not meant to bloom again until spring, right?

Well, shoot.

It’s a curious contradiction to between my enthusiasm for New Years and my perpetual pursuit of connecting to nature. Ultimately, as in most situations, I’ve decided I can have both. I’m a creature of the world I live in, so I’ll continue to be subscribed to the turning of the calendar page and saluting January as the start of a new year.

But this year I’ll do it with nature’s rhythms more in mind. It makes sense for the new year I’m trying to have: one filled with steadiness, ease, earth and community.

My word for 2024 is: steady.

I wrote it down in my notebook a few days ago, thinking about how to embody the spirit of having worked so hard to create my dream life, and now focusing the year on living in it. I do not wish to hustle, or to have any big bangs, or to radically transform myself in 2024. I simply wish to thrive, sustainably, in the world I have spent the last 35 years building for myself.

My choice of “steady” was validated when I gleefully saw Morgan Harper Nichols’ annual words of the year post. It’s a fun post I look forward to every year (go do it!), just a playful exercise, but this year I snapped my screenshot and it said: “Steadiness. Sustain forward movement by pacing yourself. For ‘pacing yourself’ isn’t only about taking breaks of moving slowly; instead it is an opportunity to find the rhythms that work for you in different phases and seasons of life.” So, that’s that.

I recently did a Q&A where someone asked about my practices to stay steady amongst all the chaos of life, and I wanted to re-share some of the habits I’ll be taking with me into 2024 here:

• Every morning, I wake up and go straight outside. Bleary eyed, barefoot, in my bathrobe, I beeline for the backdoor and go step outside. On the coldest mornings, it’s just for a sharp inhale, a quick salute to nature, and a scurry back to the heated blanket. On warmer days, it’s a lingering greeting to the day, stooping on the patio for a moment to listen to the birds and marvel at the sky. No matter if it’s for 30 seconds or 5 minutes, starting the day outside immediately makes me better.

• My phone doesn’t come into the bedroom. I sleep with my phone plugged into the kitchen. This is the single most helpful change I have made in my life in the last few years. 10/10 please try it.

• I live by lists, and timers too. I’m looking forward to diving deeper into my ADHD in 2024, and leaning more into the tools I’ve learned help me function in society. Lists, every day. I’ve been keeping a Moleskine weekly agenda for nearly a decade and would be so hectic without it. I’ve also been trying to combat my time blindness and lack of object permanence by setting timers (hello, laundry).

• I wake up early. Usually around 6:00 AM, but as early as 4:30 AM when my internal clock gets overeager. I wake up about two hours before everyone else in my house and my solo quiet morning time is one of my favorite parts of the day.

• Taking multiple ‘laps’ around the garden daily. My neighbor Holly takes a walk around the block like 3-5 times a day, and while I’m not quite motivated enough to leave my property line like that, I “go take a lap” a few times a day around the homestead to give my eyes a break from screens, reset my set, and get a little centered in between e-mails.

• Mute people who post toxic sh*t. Listen, I know unfollowing in 2023 is a political act, but did you know you can just mute people who are giving you the ick online? I’ve started to do this generously, and my online experience is rapidly improving. You do not need to subject yourself to content online that makes you feel like garbage! Who knew!

• My newest habit: setting out my outfit the night before. Are we back in 5th grade? Maybe, but it works. Deciding on an outfit spends too many morning spoons for me, so I do it at night now. I wake up and have a cute, feel-good ‘fit ready to go.

Can I tell you a secret? My two resolutions this year are to move my body every day, and to write you a little love newsletter every week. I’m becoming less of a resolutions girlie these days, but those feel right. I’ll say ‘em once, just for you, and then I’m just going to do it.

As we reach the conclusion of the most bizarre in-between week of the year, I hope you are full of holiday treats and hope for the year ahead. Next week, we’ll get into my predictions for 2024. The short story is: I think we’re all waking up to realizing the way we engage online makes everyone feel worse, and we’re all finally actually tired enough of it to knock it off. Wouldn’t that be nice?

See you next week, and wishing you all the cozies this weekend,

Katie Boué