It’s February 6 and today I finally took the time for a date with my annual pages where I reflect on the past year and dream up stuff for the new year. As if January didn’t happen at all, even though that month felt like an entire 2024. It definitely did happen. Like a month long rollercoaster of events and emotions.
I started the year off beautifully, dancing in a house in the Belgian woods with dear friends, playing games, going on walks and catching up in the jacuzzi. For the first time ever I had to leave the party early to hop on a plane back to Valencia and get cooking. Within the first week back at work, it was clear I couldn’t stay.
With an unexpected amount of freedom coming up, the ideas started pouring from my brain. There are so many things I want to try, taste, grasp, inhale. While letting go of people, energy, time limits and lack of movement (in so many senses of the word) that didn’t serve me anymore. In one big exhale it was over.
All that remains is time. Time to fill in however I want to. Endless days off to travel and spend more time with loved ones. So the first thing I did, was exactly that: go on a trip with my favourite human. Oh gosh, how delicious and necessary is a little holiday? Sleeping in, no alarm clocks, fresh bread from the local bakery, talking to every granny in town while sipping on slow coffees and a face hurting from smiling so much.
The warm feeling of gratitude thinking of all the ways I have grown in this past year, seeds planted long ago now blossoming under the Spanish sun, connections deepened like the smile wrinkles around my eyes, new lessons learned and dreams gently kneaded into reality.
Since I’m feeling like 2024 only just started, please allow me to send you my wishes for the new year:
May 2024 bring big woolly fuzzy bunches of love, crystal clear health and a side bowl of fabulous glitter soup. Life is often too serious – I mean, I take it too seriously. So let’s play. Clearly routine and nine to fives have never been able to set my heart on fire, yet I know there are ways to find magic in the mundane, to cover the ordinary in a layer of rainbow sparkles.
When looking back at my 2023, I find many little joys hidden in the pages of a book so good it makes me drool, scenes in movies I still dream about many lives later, tastes of faraway travels, friends who give the best hugs and music that makes my limbs move in ways unknown to the rest of my body.
Big smiles with sun in my eyes. Breakfast with my love on a Monday afternoon. Going to the cinema and getting excited pretending it’s the very first time ever. Yoga in the park with dirt between my toes and birds singing the morning away. Festivals that bring out the child in me. Cold ocean dips and sweaty bike rides home with two flat tyres.
I read somewhere that making art is making love with life. I had lost my words for a while, but I have found them and it feels mighty fine. All I want to do is make art! I long to write! And with my words, make love to life.
Comments