Inky fingers

#041 Christmas Cringe and other things to leave behind in 2024

My fingers are covered in blue ink.

I’ve just topped up the refillable cartridges in my Parker fountain pens, and because it’s hard to dip the nib into the jar to the correct depth, there’s a tendency for the ink to run down the barrel onto my fingers after extracting it. This is the first time I’ve filled up the pens since being in the Caribbean, and both were completely dry when I went to write with them this morning. Horrible and scratchy.

‘What’s the daftest thing you brought with you that you really didn’t need?’, a friend asked in our group chat a few weeks ago.

Others responded- denim jacket and hats.

I said, ‘The second jar of Quink ink’.

I like to write with a fountain pen, and used to take notes in therapeutic sessions using it, and penned regular poems, but now I’m in a paperless service I’m writing much less by hand and with little pause for poetry, my preferred pens have barely been used. This is something I intend to remedy.

Back in the summer my mum looked at the jars of ink I was packing into my suitcase.

‘You’re taking two?’ she said, quizzically.

Even after the eighth weigh-in and re-pack in an effort to get my bags under the British Airways weight requirement, the second jar of ink remained. What if I couldn’t get it on island??

I’ve been here for almost four months now, and at the current rate of use, I’ll need to be here some years to get through both jars…

Twixtmas Review

We’re in that strange time between Christmas and New Year when the presents have been given, the turkey eaten, and the time to the next payday extends into belt tightening eternity. Back in the UK I’d either be watching the TV Christmas specials, or taking a long walk in the forest, wrapped up in new gloves and scarfs or waterproof coats.

Here we had an unexpectedly rainy Christmas, so I’m hankering to get down to the beach and soak up some rays, but I’ve picked up a Christmas bug, and all I want to do is rest. I’ve taken the opportunity to relax on my bed and do some writing…

How was your Christmas? Did you have the Hallmark Card version, or the real life version?

A teenage family member gave me the Christmas Day gift of feedback that my writing was ‘cringe’. Efforts to glean more details of the cringeworthy elements were met with teenage tautology. After pondering the criticism, instead I leaned into the ‘Let Them Theory’, advocated by Mel Robbins. Rather than following a path trying to please others, avoiding criticism and controlling the thoughts others have of us, which only serves to restrict our journey in life, she offers a different path. This, she says will allow us to free ourselves from the judgements of others, and pursue what really matters to us in life with confidence.

My writing is not everyone’s cup of tea. It may make people cringe, but rather than worrying about that, today I’m going to ‘Let Them’, and let myself write what I want.

The paths we’ve taken

As we enter the last few days of 2024, the slow post-Christmas pace invites reflection on the year that has passed, and the year soon to come. This is something that I have have made a conscious effort to do for the past few years- certainly since December 2020 when I, like many others, spent NYE alone.

There are many ways to do this kind of reflection, but I draw out a timeline on a big flipchart paper, like a snake curling out from the middle. I break up the year into months, and one by one remind myself of all the things that have happened.

I write down significant things from my home life, health, career, relationships, with the colour coding I aspire to emulate all year! This visual method serves as a memory prompt, and allows a little distance from which to reflect more dispassionately. I then consider a number of reflective questions, writing the answers on the page. The questions have evolved over the years, initially coming from a podcast by

Dr Rosie Gilderthorp

a few (can it be four??) years ago.

Once complete, I fold up and keep the review that I’ve drawn, so I’ve been able to look back over previous years. As these are packed away in storage this year, and I can’t find the podcast episode from which they came, I’ve had to find new reflective questions and start again (see sources at the end). I’ve also added a few of my own questions that invite a more dreaming, heart and soul filled approach. These I’ll call the Cringe Questions.

You might want to try them yourself.

Looking back-

• What things are you most proud of this year?

• What are you most grateful for?

• Who provided you with the strongest support?

• What was the biggest challenge that you faced this year?

• What helped you to approach it?

• What has been the hardest loss or lesson?

• What have you done to take care of yourself this year?

• What has brought you joy?

• If you can travel back to last year, what would you tell yourself?

Going forward-

• What do you need to let go of going into 2025?

• What do you want to take with you?

• What will you do to take care of yourself in the coming year?

• Is there an image, poem or story that will help you hold onto what’s important to you in 2025?

And finally, the question that keeps coming my way this week…

If you know Mary Oliver’s poetry, you already know that this question invites a different type of living to the productivity mindsets we’re steeped in, and typically make up New Year’s target setting questions. Oliver’s poetry celebrates a type of living that prioritises time with nature; sitting by the river listening out for the grasshopper, waiting for the kingfisher to fly by, and being idle and blessed.

Blessed. There is that word again.

• How have you been blessed this year?

I’m going to ask myself these questions over the next couple of days, and remember that we only get one wild and precious life. We only get to experience the road taken.

In making the choice to fly 8000 miles away for a job, rather than accepting the one over the road my life has taken a completely different path to any I might’ve anticipated last year. I wonder about that other path very rarely. There is nothing to be gained in doing so, that path can never be known.

Your life will have taken twists and turns that you may not have imagined either, and although we cannot have it all figured out in advance, we can pause and consider which direction our heart pulls us towards next.

The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost

I don’t believe in new year’s resolutions- I fail to meet them every year. Instead I try to make a more general kind of commitment to myself. And the commitment for this year? I’m not sure yet, but wherever my fountain pen and inky fingers spend 2025, I want the path I take to be paved with more poetry and creative writing. I will be blessed if the path is flanked with trees with deepening roots of assuredness, and blossoming friendships.

Thanks for joining me on my 2024 Substack journey- I hope you’ll come back to see what 2025 brings. What more can be said, but I hope you have a Happy New Year!

Sources:

The Business of Psychology - Psychology Business School

63 Thought-provoking Year-end Review Questions To Ask Yourself