Beginning Again in 2026

Reflections on imperfection, creativity, and beginning again

The beginning of a new year always feels hopeful. On the 31st December, we wrap up the previous year in a neat, tidy parcel and hand it back to the past in a symbolic but palpable sealing-off ritual. Whether we’ve dressed up in feathered, sparkly, or studded clothes and are passing round large plates of tiny canapés in the half-light of somebody else’s living room, or we’re curled up in pyjamas and fluffy socks in the comfort of our own couch, we all wave goodbye to the previous year (and a previous version of ourselves) when the clock strikes twelve. Glasses clink and champagne is popped as fireworks explode in the night sky. Somewhere in the ether, there exists a more disciplined, more efficient, more coherent version of ourselves, waiting to be realised if we can just master that magical sequence of habits and behaviours that unlock our optimal selves. Goodbye 2025. Hello 2026. We exchange a kiss and participate in a karmic fiction that allows us to imagine a temporal rupture, even as our habits, anxieties, and unfinished projects follow us faithfully into the new year.

Last year, I was imperfect. Too unproductive, undisciplined, and disorganised. I missed deadlines, stopped writing for weeks on end, wallowed in grief, and met face-on with my fallibility in yet another visit to Colchester’s A&E department. This year, I will finally stretch into my full potential. Each day will begin with journalling, a morning walk, and a warm glass of lemon water. A mythic ‘perfect’ iteration of me will finally appear in flesh and bone. My new routines will reflect in my glowing skin and shiny white teeth and a ripple of muscle when I move. My productivity will be off the charts and my focus unwavering. My iCal clearly marked. My life elegantly ordered.

And yet I already know how this story goes. How quickly this fragile promise collapses under the ordinary weight of being human. On the days when the sun is hiding behind murky clouds and the wind is whipping at the waves outside, reaching for my trainers and a glass of lemon water is the last thing I want to do. My body remains stubbornly flawed. Days fray at the edges. Grief resurfaces at 3am. The writing resists my tightly packed schedule. My fantasy of optimisation dissolved at the first missed morning walk.

What remains, instead, is self-criticism and an overwhelming feeling of guilt. As a self-confessed perfectionist, I find this particularly hard. Surely, with enough self-surveillance, enough refinement, and enough willpower, I can finally earn the ease of habit and clarity of routine that I’ve been promised? My Instagram feed is filled with health trackers, ice plunges, and smoothie recipes. Influencers in coordinating athleisure wear sets are contorted on yoga mats and every other post is an ad for collagen supplements. Others are performing the life that I can’t seem to sustain. Instead, I skip walks. I leave my journal blank. I sip my lemon water cold and half-forgotten. Of course, we all know that consistency and perseverance are key. Or so the maxim goes. In reality, perfectionism lends itself to all-or-nothing thinking. If I can’t do it flawlessly, I don’t want to do it at all. If a page isn’t faultless, it’s failure. If a day isn’t maximally productive, it’s wasted. If a Substack post isn’t word-perfect, it stays in drafts. And so on.

While the language of optimisation presents itself as neutral, even benevolent, what this framing obscures is how deeply moralised our productivity culture is. We are often asked to take personal responsibility for structural pressures, emotional fatigue, and the sheer unevenness of life. Nothing changes if nothing changes. Be relentless in your pursuit of your best self. Your results are the reflection of your routines. Productivity becomes virtue - particularly in impossible circumstances. You can do it! Disorganisation becomes failure - no matter the context. No excuses. And difficulty becomes evidence of insufficient effort rather than a feature of our humanity in complex realities. Yet, the work I value most rarely happens under such punishing conditions. The creative process is largely unseen and unrewarded. The thinking, the writing, the playing, the percolating, the tinkering and dabbling. It emerges in the rough, the incomplete, and the very much imperfect. So why do I feel the need to produce pearly, polished drafts before I hit ‘publish’? Why do I feel like an imposter if my work is messy and my sentences half-formed? Why do I equate imperfection with failure when the very act of showing up is where the work lives?

So, my goal for 2026 is simply to keep showing up, falling over, and beginning again. To post the Substack that isn’t perfectly polished and take the walk in the rain. To let each imperfect thing accumulate, and to trust that the process itself holds more value than any imagined endpoint.