Notes On: How to Romanticise 2025
Bc aren't we just so lucky to be living this life?????
“And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been” — Rainer Maria Rilke
“But on a Wednesday, in a café, I watched it begin again” — Taylor Swift
I’m not sure what 2024 was like, for you. It may have been the best year of your life so far. You may have travelled to sun-blushed horizons or settled into a new home or found yourself re-reading words on an email you’d never thought you’d receive (I’m delighted to offer you…). It may have been one of the worst: Depression seeping into your everyday like a vignette. Wordless grief piercing the edges of every moment. And, of course, it may have been somewhere in-between: quiet, lilting contentment pierced occasionally by joy or, perhaps, despair. Folding the laundry. Filing your tax returns. Cleaning the litter tray. Spending time with people who don’t see you, but nevertheless make a Saturday evening in the pub pass slightly quicker. That aching beauty — or profound mundanity — of an ordinary life.
And I’m not sure what 2025 will be like, for you, either. In fact, very little is known about the year to come. What we do know: Trump will speak nonsense into microphones. Germany will hold a general election. Lana Del Rey will release a new album. You’ll read one really good book. You’ll get obsessed with a new song, or a new artist. You’ll make New Year’s Resolutions, but you won’t stick to them, and that’s okay. You’ll watch the sun bleed different colours across the sky. You’ll eat some really good pancakes. You’ll think: I can’t do this. You’ll think: I CAN do this. You’ll try to spend less time online. You’ll (probably) fail. You’ll burn some toast. You’ll make mistakes. That’s okay, too.
Because – and this is really important – you do not need to be fresh and clean and perfect to think of today as a new beginning. It is the machinations of capitalism that try to convince you that you need to re-invent yourself, just because a new calendar year has started. That you need to increase your reading lists and decrease the size of your waist. That ‘you’d only be happy if’ (you had this face mask, or that moisturiser, or those abs). You are enough, just as you are, with all your eccentricities and cellulite and wounds and triggers that, every now and again, make you want to curl up under covers and never come out.
And yet.
This Wednesday 1st January 2025 might just be the time for you to start a new page and begin again – without the lemon water and the diet culture and the implication that you’re in some way lacking (because you’re not). With that in mind, here are some rules to spice up 2025.
Self-Care Sundays
Sundays are for scrolling Pinterest and planning your week and getting lost in books, or woods, or long conversations with friends on sofas under blankets drinking tea.
Treat Yourself (as you would a child, or maybe a lover)
Buy yourself flowers and coffees and takeout pizzas and eat them on beaches with bare feet as the sun sets. Take photos and get them developed and stick them on the fridge. Get your nails done and hang disco balls so they catch the light and treat yourself to a PT session because you’re not quite sure how to do a squat without injuring yourself. Take your supplements. Swipe SPF onto your face every single day. Brush conditioning treatment into damp ends. Your future self will thank you. Oh, and buy yourself a tiny gift at the beginning of each month. Just because.
Treat Others (as you would yourself)
Send your friends letters. Paint them tiny pictures. Plan a surprise party for your partner, or your sister, or your mum. Donate to organisations you believe in. It is such a privilege to live in a part of the world where art lights up the sky on New Year’s Eve and crowds sing in unison and strangers smile at each other on country walks. If ever you’re feeling low, or out of control, remind yourself of this.
Read, Read, Read
Inhale books like oxygen. Read fiction and non-fiction and journalism and poetry and everything and anything under the sun. Reading is the best way to feel empathy: it’s also the best way to feel relaxed, and to find your way out of this world and into another one, even if it’s just for a few moments. (I have a whole post coming on my favourite books of last year, if you need inspiration).
Embrace The Things You Love
High-quality basics. Silk eye masks. Slippers. Good writing and cocktails and loungewear and cinnamon hot chocolates and pesto pasta and the sound of rain and clifftop walks and tipping your face to the sun, eyes closed, every single time you can.
Rewrite Mondays
Mondays don’t have to be the worst day of the week. They could be the day you let yourself buy a takeout coffee or a sugar-dusted donut; the day you wear your favourite lip combo or watch the show you’re obsessed with on the train. Most adults work a total of 2,115 Mondays in their lifetime. That’s 50,760 hours of hating your life. This life is too short to hate: Make 2025 the year you rewrite your Mondays.
Gatekeep Your Energy
Your time, your emotions, your life – all these things are finite. Don’t waste them.
Only Connect! (The prose and the passion)
The great irony of social media is that, in its attempt to connect with others, it often does the opposite. You find yourself looking at a screen more than you look at the world. But the more of this life I live, the more I find myself thinking that the best moments in life are about connection. With loved ones; with the world; with yourself. But the modern pulse of life is, I often think, about keeping you disconnected.
I spend a lot of my time writing about how to ‘romanticise’ or ‘spice up’ your life, but – and this is me being really honest, here – I think there’s an incredible danger in the rhetoric we often hear about these things. I try and make it very clear in my writing that to romanticise – to find the tiny joys in this world – doesn’t mean cutting off from it.
I’ve spoken to a lot of people, this past year, who have stopped engaging with the news, because it’s ‘depressing.’ They don’t want to hear about what’s going on in Gaza, in Syria, in Ukraine. They don’t want to read about the stats coming out from the UN about the 50% increase in conflict-related sexual violence since 2022; that 140 women and girls are killed – daily – by their own family members. Because it’s depressing. Yes, it’s depressing. It’s devastating. It’s heartbreaking. But it’s also happening. And, although it may not feel like it, there are things we can do (write to our MPs, donate, protest). By all means, limit how you interact with it – you don’t need BBC Breaking News going off every five minutes – but please, please, please don’t disconnect. It’s hard to face it all, to read about it all, but it’s important. Really important. So: stay connected. With your friends, with the news, with your family, with the things you love. Because, as Brené Brown so beautifully put it: “Connection is why we’re here; it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives.”
And Finally: Take It Slow
In 2024, everything felt so fast. Trends rising like meteors. One week, we’re all be going about our lives, the next we’re be saying ‘so demure’ every other sentence. And personally, I found myself trying to maximise every second of my life. I started listening to the news whilst brushing my teeth in the morning, just to tick two things off in one go. I’d listen to work podcasts on my morning run, and triple-task my way through making breakfast (cleaning the kitchen, feeding my cat, listening to yet another podcast). I was filling my brain with so much information, whilst also trying to maximise every waking second. And it felt good, at the time. It felt productive.
But now, I wonder whether embracing the slow might be a better way of life. To do one thing at a time. Because – and this will come as a shock to you perfectionists out there – not every second of your day has to be maximised. But if I learned one thing from 2024 (and I learned many), it’s this: it’s very hard to find contentment when you’re always rushing. So take it slow. Spend hours in bookshops. Go for long meandering walks without your headphones.
This life is full of tiny moments of wonder. May 2025 bring the courage, the will, the headspace (and the patience), to notice them.
P. S.
Yearly Paid Subscriptions are still 50% off (£20) right now, until tomorrow (2nd) <3
Have you read Stolen Focus by Johann Hari? When you mentioned maximizing every moment of your day and taking in, in, in content, it made me think of this book. I was flooding my mind with so much content that there was no free moment to CREATE a single thought of my own. We are on the same page this year <3
My notes on your notes : x
- great idea about the mondays , I’m going to think of something I can do every Monday that makes me look forward to it.
- I’m also going to start buying myself small bundles of flowers at the beginning of every month. I love flowers, but only ever get them if someone else gives them to me as a gift. Always seemed like a frivolous expense. But I would by some for a friend in a heartbeat so why not myself?
- Gorgeous words about not disconnecting. I’ve found it helpful to turn off all app notifications, so when I am ready to engage or connect I know it’s on my terms and when I have the brain capacity to absorb it.
- Regarding taking it slow, I’ve started walking my dog in the mornings not listening to everything. I’ve noticed it really does make my days seem less hyperactive.