New Year, Old Us

I'm still me and I bet you are, too

I’d hoped to post a New Year’s message last week, on the 1st, wishing us all a happy 2025. But just minutes after waking on New Year’s Day, I saw alert texts from friends and family asking if I was okay, as well as text messages from the City of New Orleans instructing me to avoid the Canal and Bourbon Street area downtown due to a “mass casualty incident.” The buildings in the French Quarter are some of the oldest in the city and we’ve had a few building collapses in the last few months/years, so I thought that might be it. The streets of the French Quarter are mostly narrow and very crowded on holidays and special events like New Year’s Eve, so because I was still groggy from sleep, I thought maybe the mass casualty incident was a vehicle accident.

I was only partially wrong. It involved a vehicle, but it wasn’t an accident.

But I don’t want to talk about that here. It’s a topic of conversation at work, in friend groups and pretty much everywhere I’ve gone this first week of 2025. There’s probably more to say, more to know, about the New Year’s Day attack, but I want to use this space for something else.

On New Year’s Day, I decided to lean into the slowness I’d been feeling since Dec 20th when I started my Christmas vacation. I love the late Dec-early Jan (Capricorn) season best of all because it often feels outside standard time. We’re more consciously closer to our ancestral and animal roots, instinctively hibernating, resting, refreshing the house and ourselves for the year to come.

I’ve joked for years that I celebrate this slow winter season until my birthday, a week after the calendar year starts. A lot of cultures follow a similar practice to this. In Christian cultures, the Christmas season goes until Twelfth Night, either January 5th or 6th, just before my birthday. That’s what the “twelve days of Christmas” means. You don’t take down your decorations or return to normal life until after Twelfth Night, though this gets harder and harder to observe in a Capitalist society ruled by the Gregorian calendar.

Lunar New Year (also known as Chinese New Year) falls on the day of the first new moon of the year (2025’s is January 29th), with an emphasis on cleaning, cutting hair and preparing *before* the new moon (i.e. these first few weeks in January - now).

In the past, I’ve tried to do everything before midnight on New Year’s Eve - clean my inbox, clean my house, finish all of the books I’m currently reading. But during the last few years, I’ve had to shift some of this cleaning and finishing energy to the first few days and weeks of the year, which sometimes feels out of step with everyone else, but more natural for me.

Growing up, my birthday usually fell during the first week back at school, if not the first day (Monday birthdays are the worst) and many people were ready to bring to a close the celebratory, reflective season, but not me. I frequently make a big deal of my birthday for myself as a way of marking a personal new year.

So far in 2025, I’m seeing more people slow down and stay in tune with me and these instincts - like in this Instagram video from Assata Blooms (I feel so validated and seen!).

So here’s some of the things that have helped me enjoy my personal new year so far:

On the first, I read New Year’s posts for two self-care/awareness gurus I’ve followed for years, but less attentively lately. Danielle LaPorte had a podcast episode talking about the benefits of following a Lunar New Year, putting into words (and context) a lot of what I’m feeling. And Gretchen Rubin emailed about her 25 for ’25 challenge (read 25 minutes a day). I’m also trying out her Happier app, which has a spinning wheel with 5 minute challenges. The one I got on the first was “Go for a short walk and look for holiday decorations” - which I actually did on the 3rd. I paid bills, as I usually do around the first of every month. I talked to my producing partner and went to a friends’ house for the traditional New Year’s Day meal of black eyed peas (for luck) and cabbage (for wealth). I’ve heard tell this tradition is mostly a Southern thing, but it is indeed, a thing.

I made meals from the Blue Apron meal kit I’m trying out, listened to Serial’s 6-episode podcast The Good Whale (free for a limited time) and got obsessed with the original song (and the video!) in episode 5. I listened to many episodes of Lore, which I started listening to last year - there’s just something so wonderful about the host’s soothing voice while he narrates grisly and scary folklore.

I took a long walk around my neighborhood on Friday, realizing that I could connect two chores in two separate directions from my house with a small treat - stopping at the CC’s between the two chore locations to get my free birthday drink. I took photos of a beautiful tree on my route and had a wonderful conversation with a man passing by who also has favorite trees around town that he photographs.

I’m trying something a little different calendar-wise this year. I opted for a tiny two-year planner to write appointments and my work schedule into, but am creating an ongoing journal calendar filled with to-do lists. I’ve limited my to-do list to 5-6 things each day so far and I’ve only been able to check off half of them as “done” each day, but I’m enjoying a very peaceful, slow productiveness. And ultimately, I’m checking everything off, even if it’s not on the day I put it on the to-do list.

Another thing about Twelfth Night is it kicks of the Carnival season (which ends with Mardi Gras), which means we can officially eat king cake. Just in time for my birthday, my first king cake of 2025 was from Dong Phuong and I got the baby, which is lucky!

There’s a lot of great stuff coming this year. I’m actively working towards several of them - completing a commission I received late last year, shooting a short film version of the pilot for “Emergency Contact,” the tv show I started developing in 2019 (and hoped to shoot in 2020). I have a lot of fears for the future, too, believe me. But I’m fighting for fun, productivity and peace in 2025, one to-do list and one day at a time.

One of my goals for 2025 is to post on Substack at least twice weekly, one free post and one for paid subscribers. I’m planning on sharing some of what I learned in the first half of the Flyte program last year, as well as some of my writing and other projects in more “essay-ish” posts for paid subscribers and free posts will feature what I’m reading, listening to and watching. I’m thinking about posting interviews soon, too, and maybe even an exclusive podcast only through Substack.

I’d love to hear from you about what posts you’ve enjoyed most, what you’d most like to see and hear from me in the future. Thanks to all of you who message me or tell me in person what you think about the Substack - it’s great to hear from you, however you want to share.

If you’re in a giving, celebratory mood, I’d welcome gift cards for my birthday - Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop, CC’s Coffeeshop, Home Depot or Lowe’s would all be useful since I love practical, helpful gifts. OR, become a paid subscriber!