The Last New Start

I watched the clock on my phone tick over, as I had done so many times before. I recited vehement valedictions: so long to starting over, au revoir to over-thinking, farewell to feeling afraid. I said goodbye to the procrastination and perfectionism that have prevented me making progress and resolved to replace them with persistence and perseverance – practices that have proved their worth.

The clock ticked from 23:59 to 00:00. From December to January, from 2025 to 2026. From an end to a beginning, from then to now.

This is not the first time I’ve written these words. This is not the first time I’ve expressed these sentiments. I watched the clock tick over from 2025 to 2026 in exactly the same way I watched it tick from 2024 to 2025, and from 2023 to 2024 and 2022 to 2023 before that. I’ve had far too many new starts.

“I keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil my copybooks, and I make so many beginnings there will never be an end”

~ Laurie Laurence in Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

An epiphany, before Epiphany: there is no epiphany. There’s no one moment in which it all comes together.

Now. 2026. My false dawns are done. My time watching the clock is up. I will take fate by the throat.

This post today. 19 more by the end of the year. Promises that will quickly become proof.