PeonyMagazine

  January is often framed as a month of forward motion, a relentless push toward a  new you  that stands somewhere in the shimmering, distant future. We are told to look ahead, to purge the old, and to burn the maps of where we’ve been. But in the deep, heavy silence of mid-winter, this forward gaze can feel cold and hollow. It is hard to run toward a new version of yourself when the ground is frozen, and the air is thin. In this season of quiet recalibration, the most vital direction isn’t forward: it is South. In the symbolic compass of the soul, South is the direction of origin. It is the path back to the heat of the sun, to the soil that raised us, and to the versions of ourselves we left behind in the rush to “improve.” To turn south in January is to realize that you cannot build a new house without honoring the foundation, and you cannot start a new chapter if you have forgotten the language of the book. The Myth of the Blank Slate The world tells us that January 1s...

  The house wakes up like a cat. First one eye opens, then the other. You can hear the radiators making a lot of noise as they get hot. The light in the kitchen is really yellow. I am standing there wearing wool socks. I want the kettle to work correctly. I want the kettle to remember that it is supposed to boil water. My old enamel cup has a chip in it from when I moved in. I got this chip on moving day. I never got around to fixing it. In January, you start to notice all the problems with everything—the house, the kettle, and the cup. Everything seems to have a lot of issues in January. No one cheers for this hour. I do not feel new. I am still the person who slept with my phone on my pillow and neglected to respond to an email, and the calendar is just a piece of paper placed on top of yesterday’s mess. It isn’t easy to open the oat container’s cover. Halfway through, the drawer containing the spoons becomes stuck. It’s chilly on the floor. In my life, fresh beginnings look like...

  January arrives without ceremony. No countdown, no music swelling to carry it forward. It simply shows up one morning, quiet and pale, asking us to keep going when the warmth of December has already packed itself away. The decorations are gone. The lights come down. The house feels quieter than it did just weeks ago. Even the air feels different. The calendar opens up, long and empty, and suddenly there’s nowhere to hide. People say January is a fresh start. But for me, it has never felt that way. January feels more like standing still after something big has ended, not knowing what comes next, but knowing you can’t stay where you are. One January, a few years ago, I felt completely  lost . The year before had taken more out of me than I expected. Things ended without closure. Some plans didn’t work out. Some relationships faded without a clear reason. By the time December came, I was tired in a way sleep couldn’t fix. The holidays distracted me for a while, family dinners, ...

  When the house finally goes quiet, and the moon spills through the blinds like a memory, I start thinking about the people I’ve hurt. Not intentionally, not cruelly, just carelessly, like children often do when they don’t yet understand how heavy their hands can be. My sister’s laugh used to annoy me. It was loud and easy, like she didn’t know the world was supposed to be hard. I was the older one, sharper, quicker with words that cut deeper than I ever meant. I used to mock her drawings, hide her toys, and make her cry just to feel in control of something. We grew up and drifted apart, different cities, different lives. But some nights, her face at eight years old visits me again. That small, wounded look that asked what she had done wrong. It eats at me, even now. I think about calling her, telling her I’m sorry for every cruel thing I said, for being a sister who didn’t protect her. Sometimes I imagine her forgiving me. Sometimes I imagine she won’t. But I’ve learned that apol...

  The air got that October bite to it last night, the kind that makes you pull your collar up and wonder how fast the year went. It’s that perfect, in-between weather. Not summer’s suffocating press, not winter’s blank brutality. It’s the  liminal month , a deep breath before the long sleep, when everything feels like a hinge, swinging between what was and what will be. That may be why this season feels so reflective, so tuned to the knots we all carry: the messy, contradictory human truths we spend all our time trying to smooth out. We’re taught to pick a lane, be  consistent , be one thing. But honestly, who is? Do we  really   want  to be one thing?  We often discuss  ambition vs. rest  as if they were mortal enemies. We worship the grind –   well, I certainly do . The tendency is to push until the eyes are burning and the jaws ache from clenching, chasing some imaginary finish line that recedes the moment it gets close. We’re co...

  October turns the office into a funhouse. There’s a bowl of mini-Snickers by the copier, paper bats taped crooked over the kitchen sink, and a new “spooky” emoji pack in Slack. The sun clocks out early, and by five-thirty the windows are black mirrors that throw your face back at you. That’s when I noticed my favorite costume: the professional mask, badge, lanyard, and smile. It fits so well, I forget I’m wearing it. My professional self says, “Great question,” even when it isn’t, and “Happy to help,” even when I’m not. I maintain a professional demeanor, keeping an inbox that appears calm and a voice that sounds confident. This mask isn’t fake exactly. It’s a part of me, the part that can guide a meeting out of a ditch, the part that knows how to put a mess into a slide deck and call it a plan. It pays rent. It opens doors. It’s useful. But every mask has a price. Mine subtracts volume from the parts of me that hesitate, the parts that need a beat to think, the parts that want t...