A quiet Christmas and a yearning for joy
and a reminder to take it easy.
December is my favourite month. Despite the cold and rain, there are fairy lights and joyful festive tunes and mince pies. Lebkuchen! Stupid jumpers! The Holiday and Jude Law’s lovely face! It always feels magical and uplifting. It always feels like home.
This year, Christmas was going to be the first time Luke’s mum met my mum. We had it planned since last year, when Sammy the dog was too old to travel, and Pembrokeshire was too far away for anyone else to visit. This year was going to be the year.
When Lorraine was in the hospital and we knew she wouldn’t wake up, I thought about our plans for Christmas. My heart felt battered, for Lorraine and for Luke. So I tucked it away, and now Christmas is here.
When anyone asks me about our plans for Christmas, I tell them we are doing as much as we can to make space for rest. I spoke with a good friend who lost her mum in 2023, and her advice for the first Christmas without the person we love: keep things simple. One meat, one starch, lots of rest. So that’s what we’re planning for - an easy, and incredibly not easy day. A day where emotions are welcomed, the pressure is off, the food is good. Perhaps the TV is always on, something comforting and familiar. The house is warm, the hugs are generous, and Star is demanding belly rubs.
In between the planning and present wrapping, I can’t help but consider the plans I was making for 2024 this time last year. This was the year for change - a move closer to the countryside for more space, and a dog. This was going to be the year that I made waves with my writing, possibly even finished my novel. I wanted to end this year feeling closer to the dream that’s settled down and taken root in my mind, the dream that drives me forward and keeps me up at night. The dream of being an author.
As it stands now, I’ll be finishing the year with nineteen chapters of a story I’ll probably never revisit again, a couple of unfinished scenes for something new, a handful of newsletters and a fully formed idea locked up tightly in my mind, itching to get out.
I’ve spent a lot of time recently feeling very deflated about this. I keep writing newsletters or scenes for the new story and then grading them bad, unworthy of publication (despite the very small nature of this newsletter as it currently stands). I’ve felt utterly directionless and unable to recognise or find my voice on the page.
It’s fascinating and frustrating that, instead of recognising the incredibly hard year we’ve had - losing a childhood pet, watching the person I love lose his mother, plus some other fucked up stuff - my brain still thinks, hey - you’ve not hit your goal this year.
I’ve never been a goal-oriented person, perhaps this is why. I don’t allow myself much grace when things go awry. Failure feels so uncomfortable, so scary, so whenever I feel like I’m failing, it’s hard to keep going, to keep showing up for the thing I want to do. I don’t want to embarrass myself by trying again and again for something that may never happen.
I know achieving what we want in life often takes a butt tonne of graft. We constantly see people online who have crossed the finish line, they’ve made it. How easy! We don’t see the tears and tantrums along the way. We don’t see the rejection letters, the unfinished drafts. We don’t see the failures.
And while I know I must keep showing up for this thing I love, I also believe that we only get one life. 4,000 weeks of being alive and feeling the sunshine or rain or icy wind on our face. 4,000 weeks to try our best, survive, and find joy. 4,000 weeks to love and be loved.
So there is a balance to it all, isn’t there? We must show up and try, and we must know when to pause, rest and reflect. We must know when to have fun and make space for joy, because it’s the joy and the love and the laughs that will pull us through some of the worst times of our lives.
Next year I hope to spend more time writing about joy for this little, lovely newsletter. I started Bang Average because I wanted to remind myself and others that success is not everything. That despite what social media and self-help books and the whole fucking world tells us, the speed at which we reach the top, or even reaching the top in the first place, does not matter.
We don’t need to have some massive tidal impact on the world in order to be worthy. We don’t need to keep trying to prove to others that we are getting life right. We don’t even need to have a purpose, as writer Kate Forster so eloquently put it. We just need to be alive, and not a dick, and as content as we possibly can be. Anything else is surely a bonus.
So here’s hoping for a restful Christmas full of love. I hope yours is too.
Jess
