A year in continuous time

Briefly: A special offer from Winterfold | The new season of my podcast is here | UK live events in Oxford and Oswestry (and more to come!) | I’m in conversation with Pico Iyer online for 5 x 15 | I wrote about finding enchantment in the New Year in Time Magazine | Wintering in the Samaritans’ Feel Good Book Club | Please pre-order Enchantment 🖤 UK/US

Hello,

I felt fleetingly guilty for not sending you an email on New Year’s Day, offering you some inspiration for the year ahead. But then I forgave myself. After all, you probably weren’t lacking in emails, offering you suggestions for resolutions, or anti-resolutions, or ways of thinking about resolutions. I got them all too, and I just felt tired. I instituted a blanket policy of unsubscribing from any publication using the phrase, ‘New Year, New You’, because really. I honestly think that if I could reform myself in any major way, then I would have done so by now. 

That’s not to say I’m anti-change. I just don’t think we’re very good at deciding what changes to make, and particularly not when we’ve just lived through those disorienting midwinter days, eating weird food and probably drinking weird drinks too (why does Baileys seem so appealing in the last ten days of December?). We are sluggish, restless, a little bit irritable, and maybe not even sober. Real life is but a distant memory. This is the very definition of not the best time. If you signed any contracts in that state of mind, you could probably claim temporary insanity. 

Could this year be the year that we entertain the idea that we’re not all that bad? That - mostly - we do the best we can, and that circumstances make it difficult to be perfect? That we’re fed unrealistic expectations of the shape of a human life, promoted by people who want to make money from our angst? That real change doesn’t look like big, splashy acts of willpower, but instead more like small adjustments, repeated until they feel ordinary, and seismic shifts that are entirely beyond our control. 

So here I am, writing from the middle of January, because we live in continuous time, and every day is the start of a new annual cycle. If I have any resolution this year, it’s to try to roll with what the world offers me, rather than to wrestle life into my control. I commend it to all of you: a year of saying, yes, okay, let’s see what we can do with this; of seeing how we can make the most of what is laid at our feet. A year of asking, how can I make this more tolerable? A year of noticing all the incredible continuities that hold us every day, even through the hard bits. 

Or you could - if you can bear it - make no resolutions at all. You could just live. That’s more than enough to fill a year.

A special offer from Winterfold

I spent the days running up to New Year running three beautiful retreats in my native Whitstable - it was a lovely, restorative way to see out the old year. One of the best parts of the experience was the scent that washed through the old weatherboarded house where we rested - provided by specially-made Wintering candles by Winterfold. They burned for three days solid (with some left over - I’ve been working my way through the stubs this week), and really did make the whole time feel very special. 

If you’d like a hand-poured Wintering candle of your own, scented with cypress and petitgrain essential oils, you can order one here, and use the code WINTERLIGHT to get an exclusive 20% discount. 

How We Live Now

A new season of my podcast is out now - and we found ourselves at #1 in the UK book charts on the day of release! If you haven’t listened already, go to katherine-may.co.uk/podcast and immerse yourselves in the whole season in one go, including interviews with Lama Rod Owens, Jay Griffths, Priya Parker, Ece Temelkuran, Simran Jeet Singh and Emma Gannon. Please consider subscribing or dropping us a review.

Enchantment

The launch of Enchantment is now very close indeed - 28th February in the US, and 9th March in the UK. From this point onwards, I will be urging you to pre-order at every turn, because it makes such a massive difference to the success of the book. There are also some excellent benefits for you - not least because it usually arrives on the day of release (or earlier - sssh!).

If you have a local indie, please order from them directly, but if not, here are the links to order online:

United States & Canada

UK

Live dates & workshops

In conversation with Pico Iyer to celebrate the release of his new book, The Half-Known Life. Online for 5 x 15, January 24th 2023, 7pm. Free, register here.

Enchantment events:

Booka Books Oswestry, England, 6th March 2023, 7pm. Buy tickets here.

Blackwells Oxford, England, 9th March 2023, 7pm - in conversation with Sharon Blackie, author of Hagitude, If Women Rose Rooted and The Enchanted Life. Buy tickets here.

Portobello Books Edinburgh, Scotland, 14th March 2023, 7pm - in coversation with The Shift’s Sam Baker. Buy tickets here.

Toppings St Andrews, Scotland, 15th March 2023, 7.30pm. Buy tickets here.

Waterstones Liverpool, UK, 16th March 2023, 7pm - in conversation with Tommy Calderbanks. Buy tickets here.

Faber Members online, 19th April 2023, 7pm - in conversation with Cariad Lloyd. Buy tickets here.

More events to come, including Cambridge, Bath, Norwich, London and Dulverton, plus US online events. Watch this space :)

At the Rookery

This month, we have a Book Club with Dorte Nors, a hangout with Penny Wincer, and an exclusive online workshop about fostering desire for the Wanderers tier. Sorry I’ve had to put everything back a little this month - I’ve not been very well. But I’ll be back on top very soon. Join me at Patreon.com/katherinemay.

That’s all from me - despite my resolution grumps, a happy new year to you!

Katherine x

Website | Patreon | Retreat | Preorder: Enchantment UK /US | Buy: Wintering UK / US | Buy: The Electricity of Every Living Thing UK / US