Prioritising joy in 2025 and what that actually entails
Roofs, romance, gratitude and thermal underwear
Isn't it crazy what a little romance can do?
Let me set the scene. So, as I explained last week, the leak in my roof had been taking up most of my thoughts and on Friday I contacted two roofers who had been recommended by friends.
I had a chat with one, let's call him Chris, sent him pictures of the roof, the leak, the building, and waited to hear back. When he called, I asked him what he thought was wrong with it.
"You need a new roof, love!" Chris replied.
He continued talking but all I heard were snatches - tiles kaput, porous, letting in water, roof not doing its job - as most of my mind was focused on one thought swimming into view: I'm going to have a nervous breakdown.
Once I got off the phone, I sent my neighbour a WhatsApp telling her I was freaked out by what the roofer had said. She told me to join her in the pub.
When I got there, I poured out the tale of woe, explained all that Chris had said and then bleated: "You don't think the roof's fucked, do you?"
"Yeah, probably," she said, with a wince, adding that when we'd had some work done up there in the summer, a different roofer had clambered down with the cheering words, "I'm not telling you what to do but it does not look good up there."
I tried to laugh it off - it's difficult to laugh off a £35k estimate for a new roof1, guys, but mostly I succeeded - and went to see friends that evening.
Come the morning, that bloody roof was front and foremost in my head as I hurriedly got ready for the date I had arranged, part of a resolution to date more in 2025.
I went to meet him, thinking that I would be back by noon to liaise with Chris and the drone he was going to send up to my fucked Victorian roof and learn just how deep into debt I would sink this year.
Instead, well I'm not going to write about it (mainly for fear that he will read this) but I had a lovely time on my date. So lovely, in fact, that I hurriedly messaged my neighbour asking her to deal with Chris the roofer as my date was going well.
I finally bounced back home, full of the joys of spring on a frosty January day, the roof the farthest thing from my mind when I stumbled across Chris, his drone, and my neighbour discussing the results which were not as bad as anticipated. Even then, I hardly heard a word, beaming away, lost in rather more enjoyable thoughts, including: how wonderful life can sometimes be when you really are least expecting it.
Anyhow, that's enough of that! All I will say is: if you too retired from dating for much of 2024, maybe 2025 is the time to get back into it, I really was quite pleasantly surprised!
Now I want to talk New Year's Resolutions. I actually think mid-January is the perfect time to settle on your resolutions. It gives you a couple of weeks after the actual New Year to reflect on last year, what went right, what didn't, and what you want to do differently in this one. I have a few specific resolutions (exercise and limiting my screen time related) but the main one is quite nebulous: I want to prioritise joy in 2025.
When I look back at 2024, I spent a lot of it low and consumed with anxiety over work and money.
During Christmas, I spent time with someone who undoubtedly makes the most of life and every opportunity that comes their way and it really hammered home to me: we get one life, one go round on the carousel2, don't waste it in the doldrums. And so, my New Year's resolution is to prioritise joy and the more I think about the best ways to go about doing this, the more I think there's a micro and macro way to invite joy in.
Let's start with the more obvious macro. It's about scheduling things, as best you can, that you know will bring you joy. For almost all of us, I expect, being with the people we love and travel are the two surefire pursuits that will bring joy. A lot of the people that I love in this world irritatingly reside in New York City and so, in an attempt to prioritise joy, I have promised myself that I will get my arse to NYC this year to spend a decent amount of time with those people and foster the relationships which mean so much to me.
But I think the micro side of prioritising joy is much more interesting. Firstly, I think that means embracing opportunities for joy in the everyday - again, in my experience, this comes from spending time with people you care about. This week, I went over to a friend's flat, ate a delicious ragu with her, had a giggle on her sofa in front of Netflix, then went on a scavenger hunt through the charity shops of Peckham together. This brought me such joy! On Friday, after yoga with one of my favourite teachers, when she suggested getting lunch together, instead of saying no and hurrying home to reply to a particularly irritating email from an editor, I decided the irritating email could wait and I went for lunch with my teacher instead.
There’s another aspect of the inviting-in-joy micro that I'm turning over in my mind a lot. It is the idea that being happy is a choice. This is a very contentious subject because in the pits of depression, when even getting out of bed seems impossible, the idea that anyone could choose to feel that way is, well, a joke.
But I don't think this idea applies to depression. I believe that the theory of happiness being a choice applies to the humdrum daily grind of living, the-pulling-on-a-pair-of-tights and putting-up-with-your-annoying-colleague and waiting-for-the-bus-in-the-pissing-rain -ness of living where one can so easily focus on all the things one doesn't have, all the people who seem to have it better and the thousand annoyances that flesh is heir to. I think the choice to be happy is about spotting and experiencing the glimmers of joy that exist in that humdrum daily grind.
In some 12-step meetings, they read out the Just For Today card and it has a line that is very pertinent to this theory. "Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be." I've been thinking about that line a lot as we go into 2025. The fabulous
wrote a wonderful Substack about this very idea, arguing that choosing to be happy is the only resolution worth making.
She wrote that the way to do this is through adopting an attitude of gratitude. She suggests starting by noting each day three things that you liked.
In all honesty, I have been doing the whole gratitude list thing for a while. Right now, I send my gratitude lists on Whatsapp to my sponsee and she sends hers back to me. I really recommend doing this (even for normal non-recovery people). Firstly, gratitude is good for you. But secondly, it's such a lovely way to feel connected to someone. I adore getting to know my sponsee better and understanding what's going on in her life, by reading her gratitude lists. And it doesn't have to be a recovery thing! I do a version of a gratitude list sometimes with my best friend Lorenzo.
But I did think while I was reading India's piece: eek, I already do that, India, and too often I didn't make the choice to be happy in 2024. So I was rather reassured when she pointed out the whole choosing-to-be-happy focussing-on-gratitude thing is a long, and perhaps slow, process.
She said that focussing on the small, lovely thing that happened that day will offer you a little chink of light, perhaps just for a second.
"But those seconds add up over the course of a day, a week, a month, a year. More light comes in. Night eventually turns, if not quite into day, then into a pleasant sort of dusk, and then into golden hour, and then, at some point, if you're lucky and work hard at it, into dawn."
Perhaps it's just the fervour of the New Year, that glorious opportunity to try again, but I do think this choosing-to-be-happy is working for me so far. Instead of falling into a slump on hearing about the roof, buying chocolate from my corner shop and eating it while feeling very sorry for myself, I talked to my neighbour about it and went on with my life. Because here's what I'm learning - all this worrying does nothing productive. As I told my fellow freelancer friend (shout out to dear Emma!), looking back, when has worrying about money ever actually got me some more of it? (Never, guys.)
So going into 2025, I'm prioritising joy and I'm doing that with some planning but also a little mindset tweaking. What are your New Year's resolutions?
Some extra bits (mainly how to stay warm)
Charity shopping for the good stuff
As I said, one of my bright spots this week was trawling the charity shops of Peckham with a friend who is a pro at finding the gems in a musty old Cancer Research. She taught me to look for the materials: “we're after natural materials darling, we're looking for wool, cashmere, linen, silk, we're not picking up polyester, baby!” It worked a charm, and I walked home with a 100 per cent lambswool pullover that is just the ticket for this cold snap.
Hats
This friend is also an advocate of hats and scored me a blue beret which I adore. You plonk it on your head and it A) hides a bad hair day, B) keeps you warm and C) offers you the opportunity to click around Peckham pretending you're a secret agent (berets just scream secret agent to me).
Thermal underwear
Game changer. Warm leggings you wear under jeans that keep you toasty. I bought my first pair this week and I am now a thermal-underwear evangelical.
The Five by Hallie Rubenhold
I am reading this book on the recommendation of my friend Madeleine. We were in Daunt Books in Hampstead and she plucked it off the shelf and told me to get it as it was one of those books she yearns to read for the first time again.
It's such an interesting and worthwhile premise. Historian Rubenhold has painstakingly researched and written about the five women who were murdered by Jack The Ripper in 1888. She centres these women in a rebuke to the celebrity of Jack The Ripper who has become a macabre icon while the women he horrifically slaughtered and defaced have been lost to the mists of history. It really is quite disgusting that there are walks around Whitechapel today where tourists can gawk at the spots where these women were murdered as though it's some sort of gruesome entertainment.
The thing that is coming across to me as I read this book is just how much history there is in London. When she mentions these streets and areas that these women frequented - Holborn, Knightsbridge, specific streets in Soho - I know so many of them so well. That is the marvellous thing about London, how thick with history it is.
That's all for me this week. Tell me your New Year's Resolutions. I'll see you soon xxx
For my worried friends and family reading, don’t worry about the roof or the cost, it’s alright and I am getting another quote, I promise! And I really don’t think it’s going to be that bad!
That we know of, I actually don't believe death is the end but for the intents and purposes of this conversation and making the most of our one, precious life, I guess maybe it is?
Love the sweater
The Jack the Ripper tours are how I felt visiting the Colosseum in Rome. Everyone was doing selfies and having a laugh. I was like don’t they feel the evil and sadness radiating from this place. Lives extinguished under the guise of entertainment. Depressing levels of humanity.