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Happy almost new year, though I’m having trouble moving on to a new year when I feel like I have lived a non-year. So many days and nights lost to work, so many unfinished drafts saved to a folder that I nearly deleted in the great annual purge of digital trash.
After a fury of deadlines that seemed to last for months on end, December finally rolled around with its promise of pools and books and naps, and of course, OF COURSE, my body had to call in sick. I have since spent the last two weeks battling, then recovering from a middling cold — neither down for the count nor able to truly enjoy this life of so-called leisure.
I am fully aware of how this whinging sounds. And in an effort to not be that person, I have tasked myself to remember the softer moments of this year. Like:
1. The afternoon I found myself in a bookstore at the same time my sworn mortal enemy was giving a talk, fully panicking and scurrying out, all the while knowing how abnormal it is that I have assigned myself a mortal enemy that probably has every reason to not like me, but does anyone remember why I’m not supposed to like her? I don’t anymore. Forgive me my transgressions, for 2026 is the year I might need to work on changing my mind.
2. The night I ran into the first girl I ever liked. Picture us at 15 in a classroom, then at 37 outside a movie theatre. Her perfect hair, my naïveté. Her inability to like me back, my inability to care. I don’t even think of her anymore — haven’t since I was 17, maybe — and still: that feeling of jubilation, heady pride, gloating even, when I went up to her to say hello. Hi Jien, she replied, and at that moment I felt my 15-year-old self burst through my ribs and barrel down the corridor, childish and unrepentantly screaming, I! Fucking! Win!!!
3. A recent Saturday where we sat under a cabana as it stormed, eating fries in our swimsuits as the umbrella dripped fat rain onto the plate. Mud underfoot, the pool out of bounds. The clouds clattering harder and heavier each minute, until finally the sun pushed through, a dull grey punctuated with blinding afternoon light. The day before we swam in my favourite pool — serenely shaded, secluded, but with a constant sky-filling wail of metal drilling into concrete.
What lesson is there here? That perfect days are hard to have? That paradise is found with patience, and maybe sheer, dumb luck? And still, still pb says, how cute you guys looked eating under the cabana. How lucky we were to have the pool to ourselves. The world through her eyes is infinitely kinder, always holding on to joy.
4. One Sunday afternoon a few months back, when W. had to go to the emergency department and we joined her there. This was barely a week after I had visited L. in the very same hospital. I suppose this is friendship in your 30s. You remember to ask: What did the doctor say? Do you need a physio recommendation? Don’t forget to take your meds, and by the way, what probiotics are you on?
5. Today at 5 in the evening, texting J. about her upcoming date. 15, 25, 35, 37. Doesn’t matter how old you get — yakking about a date you don’t have to go on is a terrific way to while away time. I have had one of those bone-shaking coughs that has kept me mostly house-bound, and after two weeks the guilt of lazing about has started to chip away at me. Go for a walk, she urges, before we stop texting for the day. So I roll off the floor, drag out my treadmill, turn on music, grab a book, and begin.
By nightfall I have clocked thousands of steps, and also finished the only book I have read since July. I have found it so difficult to get through this one because nothing happens, so it feels like I am stealing time in someone’s diary — getting to know all the people blowing through her door, lovers falling in and out of bed, in and out of love. But it occurred to me today that the book is such a vivid snapshot of life: sleepy, seductive, forgettable. You’re awed and annoyed and grateful and hungry all at once. You think so loudly, feel so magnificently, and the next minute, it’s all gone. All I have of this year are blips I have tried so hard to write down, and so many more lost to the chaos of my mind. May next year be a better one.
