A Letter to the New Year

Dear New Year,

The first days of January set me in motion right away, somewhere between the Netherlands and Italy. The journey back didn’t go entirely as planned. My flight was delayed due to heavy snowfall, and once back on Italian soil, I got a flat tire on the way home, in my partner’s car.

Nothing dramatic, but one of those moments when everything suddenly comes to a halt. Of course, there was no spare tire in the trunk, and the emergency kit, meant to save the day, quickly revealed its limitations. Optimism is nice, but air alone won’t get you very far. So I called for a tow truck. And waited.

Fatigue caught up with me as we stood by the side of the road, somewhere between having arrived and still wanting to get home. In the end, we unexpectedly spent the night in a hotel in Rome. Not the kind of Rome you dream about, but it had a clean bed, a shower, and the reassuring sense that, in the end, everything can be solved.

It wasn’t the start of the year I had imagined, but it ended the way many things do: the next morning, after a good breakfast, a new tire was fitted, I made it home, and a day later life simply carried on. A small, unexpected adventure, with a neat ending and a story worth keeping.

Maybe that was the first lesson of the year: not everything begins smoothly, but that doesn’t mean it’s going off track. Sometimes it simply means you have to wait for the right tools to appear.

Early January always feels like landing, to me. I tidy up, both literally and mentally. I put things back in place, including in my head. No big decisions, no long lists of resolutions. That moment comes later.

As my birthday approaches, toward the end of the month, the tone shifts. Time becomes tangible. I don’t just look back, but ahead. At what I still want to create. At plans and projects that have been waiting patiently and that I no longer want to leave drifting on good intentions alone.

It’s around my birthday that energy returns. No fireworks, no dramatic turning points, but a quiet determination. The realization that change is necessary if things are no longer meant to remain optional. And the understanding that change rarely happens by itself. It asks for choices, for structure, for small actions repeated even when inspiration has stepped out for coffee.

I want movement in my life, even if the world around me remains largely the same. Not by overturning everything, but by working more deliberately and living more consciously. By no longer postponing ideas, but gradually helping them find their way. With patience, and sometimes with a smile.

Italy helps me with that more than I ever expected. Here, change is rarely announced with great gestures. It slips in quietly, almost unnoticed, through habits that repeat until they become natural. That pace suits me. And to be honest, it’s far more peaceful than constantly trying to push forward.

Perhaps that flat tire, so early in the year, was already a small hint. Not as a grand symbol, I don’t really believe in that, but as a simple reminder that delays are sometimes exactly what you need to see more clearly where you’re heading. And that solutions tend to appear once you accept that not everything moves at your pace.

I’m not expecting miracles this year, but I do count on progress. Steady, thoughtful, and with trust. With room for plans that can finally take shape, not because they are new, but because I’m ready to take responsibility for them.

Let’s do it this way. With attention, with direction, and enough lightness to laugh along the way, even when we find ourselves by the side of the road again.

Un abbraccio,