Planting Seeds: How I plan to spend the first day of 2025
on the seeds I'll be planting on this first day of the year for embodiment, calm, and creativity
Once I send you this first piece of writing of the year, I will pull out the crusted recipe card for the first cake from scratch I ever learned to make, and I’ll make sure my champagne glasses get a fresh cycle in the dishwasher. I’ll pull out one of the two or three tablecloths I have, and make a list of what needs to be done before 3 or 4 friends come to eat Angel Food Cake with champagne to celebrate the new year. Then, I’ll workout, send an email or two, and clean.
A priest I’ve learned much about life from once told me, the summer after graduating from college, that some things are very much like tiny seeds, a bit of yeast in our lives. Some experiences are such that we don’t really know what they will become in our life in the future. We may think the good friend we made in college, or the one class that we took for fun, will end up as side notes, left behind in that era of our life, when really, that friend will be the one who walks by our side for 3 decades, who understands as no one else does after we have our first child. The class in photography may become the creative spark that leads to a practice of capturing those around us, and ends up becoming our ability to give people their favorite photos of themselves through the years. We don’t, as it happens, know very much about the bread the yeast will rise into, or the life of the tree this little seed may contain.
Today is the first day, or first page, of a brand new book, in a series of books that is my (and your!) life. It is both new and connected to the old. It is full of hope and shadowed by prior failures, grievances, ruts and patterns.
Today, the seeds I plant are ones I’ve tried and had mixed success and failure with. Today, as you may have read yesterday, I will do a workout that is slightly more challenging than the workout I did last week. I will set aside a small amount of time to practice undistracted creativity through longer form writing (hello, this is it here, but the other place will be in working on my novel draft), and in going to bed tonight with a clean sink, clothes in drawers, and a general lack of chaos in my apartment.
Might these seeds, as the parable says, fall on rocks again, and this small sprouting thing will wither? Possibly. But they may also become the writing practice that is regular, flexible, and less fearful for me. Exercise, as it has this past year, may become more and more a place where I learn about strength, tune into the sensation of my body, and learn how to tend to my health that is not about aesthetics or punishment. I have no idea what will come from the seeds, and that uncertainty is both unpleasant AND a good thing. The not-knowing is where the hope for it comes from, and either way, learning will happen.
I hope today, for you, is about planting a small seed, and then letting it do its thing in the soil, not drowning it with water or worrying over it from above. The ability to plant a seed and see what happens is the rare ability to try, and practice a little acceptance of not knowing where the path might take us.
As you might be able to tell, when I write to you all, I’m also writing to me. Sometimes, I’m writing to you as a reminder of what I’ve already learned, or I’m trying to find a new way through. I’m reminding myself to not follow the thread I’ve failed alongside prior, ie of starting a new year demanding some transformation or distance from my prior self, and maybe you need that reminder, too.
We don’t know where this year will take us—we hold our fear and our hope in both of our hands today. I hope you plant some seeds.