Love Letters and Hate Mail: A Fresh Year in Messy Life

We all fall under this delusion that a new year is a new beginning, a fresh start, a new self. A new year has never been about walking away, but rather about allowing whatever transpired in the last year, however it unfolded, to transform you for the future. We arrive at the doorstep of a new year, pass over the threshold only because of who we were, because of what happened to propel us through the door, because of all that happened, all we chose, all we are. 

Life, like creativity, is not a linear process, no matter what chronicling it makes us believe. Messy often gives people the ick. We are taught to be organized, pristine, and clear. Humans, art, and life are not so structured. And therein lies the beauty, the possibility of it. Messy is necessary. Contradictions exist. Changes of heart happen all the time. Lies shape realities and secrets shatter it. Yet we believe that a fresh 1 on a calendar in January means all of those messy bits of life are left behind and set to zero. 

Here’s the truth of the matter. It all matters. Who we are is an amalgamation of what we choose, who we surround ourselves with, how we behave, and where we direct our energy. What’s also true is that all that happens to us, each and every decision and behaviour around us, to us, and because of us impact who we become. What I want to convey with all of these musings and comparisons is simply this: We cannot separate who we were, are, and become based on a date. What we can do is appreciate, and if not appreciate, at least acknowledge, how that past year of life impacts us as we move forward into a new year on the calendar. What we can do is choose what to bring with us across that threshold, how we choose to conduct ourselves once we walk through it, and who we are aiming to become as we move forward. 

In the above monologue I can’t discern what parts are hate mail and which parts are love letters. And that is the dichotomy of the mess of life and the hope of newness. I prefer to look at a new year as a construction project. I intend to build a life I envision. One on my terms, with love and peace and family at its foundation. 

How to tie it all back to creativity, the heart of what I want to build, the soul of this blog? Creatives, no matter what you create, all receive both odes and love for their creations and hate, and we must be prepared to encounter both, but does that mean we have to accept all of it simply because it comes our way? No. We do not. Hate mail represents our inner critic, our otter critiques send it, but we so often believe it or at least accept it and engage with it because we have already written our own most scathing hate mail in our minds. That is the fundamental shift we need to make both in our creativity and in our lives at large; to change the inner narrative we believe about ourselves and our creativity. This year make a change; we are not blank, we are not new, we are working with imperfect creations, messy realities, but the one thing we can wrangle and purge, the one thing we can clean and mold is our own inner world, how we talk to ourselves, how we think about ourselves and by extension the life we live and creativity we create. 

Write yourself a love letter for the version of who you are right now. We are not made new, we are battle worn and still choosing to move forward with hope in our hearts and worlds to create in our heads. Love who you are. Love the person who has stepped into this new year and urge them to take care of you better now so you can become whoever they envision for you. All of us are impermanent even as we exist year after year. Creating is our way of living, of saying I am here and this is who I am and who I want to become. It is granting permanence to the person who made it even if, in the act of creating the proof, they themselves disappear, evolving into someone else built on the one who had come before, a version of you who is not seeking to create something, but someone who has now created it and looking forward to make something new. 

If you’re wondering how to move forward, how to evolve into the person you envision, I'll let you in on a little secret - start being that person today, create, make, do. Taking action is the most direct path to becoming. Creativity forces you to grow. Through creativity we forge our own character; we learn. Creativity and learning like life are messy. In the mess, in the past and present and future overlapping in our souls we grow. A beginning does not mean an ending. A beginning, a new year, means possibility - to hope, to love, to learn- and in doing so to evolve and transform in ways we never could have imagined. 

As you beautiful creatives step into a new year may you all sit down and write yourselves a love letter for who you are right now, and when you look back at it at the end of 2026, may you see the evolution of you and appreciate the same old self you bring with you everywhere you go.