Good morning, dear reader, Decembers are to the year what Sundays are to the week, wouldn’t you agree?

Both technically mark the “end” of a cycle, but to me they are also the only time when I can calmly and unhurriedly think about “beginnings”. Mondays and Januaries somehow feel too late: I’ve already started a new cycle and have no option but to course-correct. On Sundays and in Decembers, however, I can dream and reflect and plan.

For most of my life, I’ve been too harsh on myself in Decembers. That in turn led me to either set unrealistic and aggressive goals for the next year, or just sulk my way into Januaries with no goals at all. Sometimes, my annual goals were ultra-detailed (always a bad idea), and sometimes they were so vague that I could retrofit anything I ended up doing through the year as a win (also a bad idea).

This isn’t to say that I’d waste an entire year. I consider myself to be driven and ambitious, so I would still end up doing many things that could count as successes. But were they what I had wanted to do, or merely things I’d ended up doing? It was often the latter.

The thing is, bad Decembers were a chain I had to break. Without clarity, they set me up for another year of what I’d call “unguided” growth.

In many ways, I think the two years of the pandemic broke that pattern for me. Professionally, it forced me into a reckoning with myself.

What helped me break the chain was seeing my own growth through multiple perspectives.

We’ll get to that in a bit. Here’s what we have for you today:

1. Dance floors and balconies

2. Helping strays

3. First Principles favourites 📚

4. Down is up, up is down 📸

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