January notes to self

Like Post-Its, so I don't forget

Dear readers,

Welcome. This is my first free newsletter of the year for everyone who subscribes to The Joy Rise. I hope that wherever you are when you read this, 2025 has started kindly for you. Equally, I want to extend a hand to anyone who is experiencing the beginning of this new year in grief, stress, difficulty. I hope you have the support that you need.

For some time now, throughout each January, I’ve been jotting down some notes to myself for the coming year. I guess it’s my version of making a resolution, or an in + out list. I keep my notes to self within reach and return to them through the year. When I do, it can feel like finding Post-Its left by my past self in a book I love, pointing out things I don’t want to forget or miss. This year I thought to share my notes, in case anything sparks or resonates with you. Take any that do and of course leave any that don’t.

PJ mornings with Post Its, good books, and my boy, Angus.

January notes to self:

1. Your health - physical, mental, emotional - is the reason.

2. We need each other. Send the text. Make the call. Give what you can, when you can. Don’t keep the loving / kind / encouraging thing in your heart from the person you want to say it to. Even if they’re a stranger. Especially if they’re a stranger.

3. Protect yourself from any person / story that causes you to feel unsafe.

4. Think slow. Write fast. Feel it, or edit it until you do.

5. Go outside. The landscapes you love are waiting for you. Learn their stories. They nourish your own.

6. Spending time bored, daydreaming and ‘unproductive’ is the source of your greatest creativity and productivity.

7. Doing what you love is not only for other people. It’s for you. And you have everything you need, right now, exactly as you are today, and will be tomorrow, to follow the thunder in your heart.

8. Move your body everyday. Rest your body every day.

9. Refuse to close your mind and heart - stay curious.

10. Choose a book instead.

11. When things get uncomfortable, before you heed the inner critic and abandon yourself, listen to the truth your heart beats back to you: I’m – trying – my – fucking – best. Self-compassion is your most powerful stethoscope.

12. When everything has gone to shit remember Season 5 of Stranger Things is coming this year.

13. Do not get boob amnesia. Remember: underwire bras are not for you.

14. There is still, despite everything, unfathomable beauty in the world - in people. This often doesn’t feel true. It is.

15. Reassess all of this in February.

I’ve also enjoyed gathering these words in January from women artists, along with writing my notes to self.

When you are sick you can’t trust strangers, so I prefer to set up things myself and to do everything by myself, as there is no recourse. And it’s not that Diego doesn’t care, but, in the first place, in these cases men are really useless, and in the second place, they are not aware of what is happening to women, don’t you think? They think everything is ‘nothing’ as long as there is nothing happening to them, but if it were happening, the world would crumble.

– Frida Kahlo, letter to her mother, 14th January, 1932 via Letters of Note

I would say that there exists a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honouring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves – we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other’s destiny.

– Mary Oliver, an excerpt from her book, Upstream

There is ample, delicious¹ research that says, clear as day, creating art is as good for your body as exercise, it is as good for your mind as meditation. Furthermore, it doesn’t only have medicinal purposes (ie., It is not just a modem for healing from physical and mental pain.) It is preventative. It enhances our wellbeing. Making art makes shit way way better. Mood improves. Communities feel more connected. We are healthier and more joyful when we create and consume creations. […] Take art as seriously as exercise. Take art as seriously as your daily meds. Creativity is the missing pillar in self development. […] When we don’t recognise the value of art beyond its financial potential, we ignore the vast, expansive, magic of art beyond the merely mundane.

– Amie McNee, via her excellent post on

Amie’s Substack

This morning, I found myself flicking through my own book, The House That Joy Built. I was looking for another section (on not keeping company with arseholes) when I came across and remembered this one, which I recalled happens to have started out as a past note to self:

Giving ourselves permission to create and to revel in the joy of creating is a powerful act of resisting cynicism and scarcity. To choose to make art when there’s so much grief, despair, suffering, cruelty and tragedy in the world is to choose to connect with the best parts of ourselves and each other as humans. To connect with our ability to create beauty. Beauty fuels us to widen our minds, to be open-hearted and curious, and to rage against becoming apathetic. To resist living in fear. To welcome joy. As writer Maria Dahvana Headley said in her 2023 Tolkien Lecture, ‘If you stop imagining things other than your own self and your own experience, you end up really stuck and also really afraid.’¹

When we choose to create in the face of fear, we inspire others to choose their own creativity over fear too. Giving ourselves permission to answer what calls to our hearts creates an energy that catches. Like fire. As author, coach and activist Karen Walrond says, ‘I will never apologise for embracing joy and beauty – even when the world is falling apart – because joy and beauty are my fuel for activism.’²

– The House That Joy Built, page 44-45

In sharing all of these, I catch myself wondering if you’ve written any January notes to yourself too? A Post-It note trail that you want to leave for yourself to come back to? Or any particular pieces of poetry you’ve saved a screenshot of or bookmarked?

I’d love to read any that you might care to share in the comments below.

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Coming in the next issue for paid subscribers:

The second instalment of my three-part This Writer’s Life series, on the main ways I’m prepping to start the writing phase of my new novel this year. Part Two explores RITUALS and the ways I practise them to bring the world and stories of my novels to life as vividly as I can. I hope that each of these three essays can accompany your imagination like a friend, and stoke the ideas simmering / boiling in your creative heart.

Plus, regular segments like Dog of the Month, and more!

Catch up on Part One here:

#7 Before I Begin: Nerves, Excitement, Anxiety + Writing

If you have a question you’d like to ask me about creativity or writing, my website is always open.

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Win a paid subscription to The Joy Rise!

To offer some goodness online in January, I’m giving away a free annual paid subscription to The Joy Rise on Instagram.

If you’re there, and would like to enter yourself or a friend to win, you’ll find all the details here.

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There is so much asking for our attention - thanks for sharing your time with my words here and supporting my work.

With a light left on,

1. ‘If you stop imagining things’: Maria Dahvana Headley, ‘Tell me a story: how fantastical literature has been shaped by storytellers and audiences’, 2023 Tolkien Lecture, 16 May 2023, YouTube.

2. ‘I will never apologise for embracing joy’: Karen Walrond in conversation with Brené Brown, Unlocking Us podcast, www.brenebrown.com/podcast/accessing-joy-and-finding-connectionin-the-midst-of-struggle/#transcript