Kelly Sue DeConnick, writer of comics and dispenser of wisdom and motivational ass-kicking via the—what’s a term for less-than-infamous?—subfamous text group #BGSDlist, sent out a query for how we were planning to spend Liminal Week: the Most Disorienting Time of the Year. Technically, the year begins anew at the solstice, but nobody pays attention to that cosmic pedantry!

After holiday intensity is behind us, but the calendar hasn’t yet ticked over, we’re in limbo, suspended in time: between the cranky, doddering old fart of this year and the fat, wide-eyed and wailing infancy of the next one.

So I sent in the following:

I ritually pretend I’m getting a head start on things by making Boxing Day the beginning of the new year. [This is also a chance to get a jump on fooling myself, always a healthy exercise.] 

• I forgive myself any failings or missteps. 
• I think about the people dearest to me and the love they’ve given me and that I return. 
• I set my resolve, but lower my expectations (for self-kindness), and begin any new process or practice I either want to bring into my life or reestablish. 
• I repeat the 3 guiding life principles I thought up at the end of my disastrous 30s:

1. Go Slow
2. Don’t Push
3. Have Fun

This all seems rather sage, now, the wisdom of a person much older and more competent, surely at least as old as I am now. And it baffles me how I came up with such zingy Zen, when nowadays I so often feel like I’m barely able to careen through the days without entirely collapsing in a confused heap of anxious goo.

HNY!