I rarely enjoy the start of January. When everyone is off making resolutions, doing rituals, and displaying a general sense of optimism, I have a heavy bog of existential dread that washes over me.

Over the last few years I have mistaken it as a deep depression that cyclically starts each new year, and an indicator that I should not be in Los Angeles (my home) during this time. I decided I just needed a change of scenery to break up the cycle. Now I know that compulsion to leave—and the certainty it is the correct remedy—is an attempt to eject myself from deeper feelings I have about the beginning.

In the same way I never enjoyed the sun rising on the festivities of a late night party, my stomach twists and anxiety swells at the turning of a new year. While other revelers were arm-in-arm serenely welcoming that big bright star from the east, I was hurrying as fast as I could to bed to shut my eyes and make sure I didn’t see it happen, and to escape a sense of impending doom.

What is it about the beginning that feels so daunting? For one, I think we mistakenly treat January like the “Monday” of the year: initiation, fresh start, go go go. In essence, it is more like a Sunday: a time of rest and reflection after the raucous and chaotic holiday season. January is the dead of winter. It is a time to be thoughtful, intentional, and inward-oriented. A time to consider what new life wants to emerge in the coming spring. It’s not a time for pushing and grinding.

But also, January carries the weight of the year’s potential ahead. Everything that could be, everything that is possible—new love, more money, better habits, a different job, deeper friendships, general joy, health, progress—is bundled up in a giant comic acme anvil that sits right on my chest.

Can you feel it? That rudely intrusive expectation of growth?

What if the intention was just to go deeper in 2022? What if we let go of the modern fantasy narrative of progress, perfection, and more/better/bigger? Now, what does January feel like?

I posit, energetically, this is why resolutions that are action- and growth-oriented (exercise, business, etc) rarely work. We fail before we even get started because we have loaded the pressure of an entire year onto the first month, which also happens to be cold and quiet. The expectations are offensive to our entire system. We’re still in a hangover in January.

So this year when I started to feel the plummeting sensation in my body on the last day of December—that familiar sadness and grief of the end and the dread of the beginning—I just gave it permission to be. I am attempting, for once, to be aligned with the real energy of this moment. To be quiet and still. To wait and see what appears. To listen and be receptive. To let go of growth as a measure of a year, or a month. To redefine growth as a deepening into the experiences that are already here, like the way a tree grows – not just toward the sky, but deep down into the earth where you cannot see but only sense. To root. And I invite you to do the same.

With Joy & Dread (All Things Being Equal),

Erika