This is hard.

A Note for You, If You’re Having A Bad Day

Dear Friend,

So, hey. You’re not making it up, and this time of year is hard.

It’s not one hard thing, or five hard things, but an armageddon of hard things. And nevertheless, you are definitely getting bombarded with a bunch of, “Tra la la la, I love the holidays, the lights, the festivities, the family, the fires, the sparkles, it’s so magical!” I basically promise you that no one is feeling that all the time. That isn’t to say that there’s no one out there genuinely enamored with winter; but that the lyric is, “We’ll have to muddle through somehow,” not, “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.” OKAY!??!? OKAY, RADIO!?!?

Before I get too into it: I am, indeed, writing mostly to those of you reading this in the Northern Hemisphere. There’s something in here for everyone, but a lot of my qualms come with decreased daylight being treated like it doesn’t matter. (IT DOES MATTER.) If you’re in New Zealand, kindly skip whatever doesn’t apply.

This time of year isn’t going to get easier, probably ever. What you can do is understand that, indeed, you’re under more strain than normal. Everyone around you is under more strain than normal. Probably no one you encounter in your day-to-day is really okay. And it is much likelier that someone you know is muddling through somehow than that they’re actually mad at you or intentionally treating you like shit. (The amount that people treat each other like shit is 900 percent higher in the winter, and that’s science!)

Things are hard. I’ll show you.

Traveling is hard.

Even if you love getting in planes and trains and automobiles, it’s not easy on your body. The physical act of traversing enormous distances is unnatural for humans — a species evolved to walk around all day and then rest lying on piles of grass. You’re facing prolonged sitting, dehydration, disrupted sleep patterns, exposure to germs, increased stress levels, and muscle strain from carrying heavy luggage. And that’s just the getting-there part!

Traveling is also amazing, allowing us to see people who live far away who we love a lot; getting us to warmer, brighter climates in a matter of hours; revealing whole new rosters of birds (!!!!!!). But I’m just saying: the amazing stuff gets all the press! Vacations are coded as restful, and that’s simply not the case — no matter how much you splurge for electrolyte water and a really quality inflatable neck pillow. Transitions are inherently difficult, and the emotional toll of sliding out of your daily routine and then back into it at the end of a week in a hotel room takes more out of a person than you might imagine.

If you’re traveling: give yourself grace knowing that this is strenuous. If you’re moving outside your adapted landscape, you’re going to need a little more rest. Be patient with yourself.

Being sick is hard.

Speaking of germy airports, it’s no secret that Northern Hemisphere winter is a cesspool of nonstop viruses and preventable disease. Do you have a child? Your child is definitely sick. They have been sick since mid-October, and they will stay sick until mid-May. Do you leave the house ever? A sinusy fevery thing is on its way. Brace for impact.

Despite the lessons we ought to have learned from a global pandemic, there is still little cultural allowance for the reality of illness. While yes, technically, you can go to work or your crush’s cookie party while nursing an illness, you shouldn’t. It is bad for you and it is bad for everyone around you. THIS IS ACTUALLY SIMPLE!

Being sick is, by definition, hard on your body. It requires time and space and rest. These aren’t always available, and we still live in the remnants of the grit-tinged hustle culture that boomed with the tech industry.

You are living through a season of illness. Taking what you need is the kindest thing to do for the people around you. When other people take what they need, too, consider slowing down rather than rushing to fill their vacancy. This is a season that will benefit so much from less.

Managing a bunch of new STUFF is hard.

Once again, Black Friday set new records for online shopping in 2024. According to consumer reports, U.S. consumers spent $10.8 billion online, reflecting a 10.2% increase. (Globally, total spending on Black Friday reached a new high of $74.4 billion.)

Whether or not you are doing a ton of shopping, you’re probably about to have a bunch of new stuff in your home. Gift-giving is a high-contact sport under capitalism, and without putting a moral judgement on that, it’s nevertheless true that having to manage new material possessions takes time and energy.

There are the cardboard boxes. Just, such an overwhelming amount of cardboard boxes to break down and attempt to recycle. (I say “attempt to” because what really is recycling?) And then there’s the stuff itself: sweaters that demand that you look at the sweaters you had last year and edit some out; toys to smoosh into an already-overflowing play room, reminding you of dried out Play Doh and battery-poor light-up plastics that should be donated; new hot sauce to put in the fridge (or, wait: is hot sauce a shelf thing rather than a fridge thing?), new lotions to get in the medicine cabinet, new electronics to spend an entire day migrating your data onto.

The novelty of new stuff is fun, but the reality of new stuff is that it adds a bunch of tasks to an already-overflowing to-do list. Consider this as you’re counting all the pressures on your life this time of year.

Not to mention the stress that comes from overspending, which many people feel coerced into around the holidays. The feeling of not having enough money to pay for necessities — like rent, food, and medical bills — is demoralizing, shameful, and stressful enough that it literally makes people sick. And it’s not culturally acceptable to discuss, so you’re often racked¹ with private guilt about your financial choices and perceived lack.

Not getting enough sleep is hard.

This is the hill I will die on: You. Need. More. Sleep. In. Winter. For diurnal animals (animals most active during the day — humans are in this camp), light suppresses sleep and increases activity. In other words: when you have less light to work with, your body wants to sleep more because the lack of light causes you to produce more natural melatonin.

Here’s something about chickens: in the winter, chickens in the wild (and in my backyard) don’t lay eggs. They sleep more, because there’s less light. In factory farms, though, people create an environment where there’s false sun (bright light), causing hens to lay eggs in months when they biologically wouldn’t. This is sad.

Here’s something about humans: we’re a lot like chickens. The reason you think you don’t need more sleep in winter is because we have false sun in all our homes and in every building and throughout the industrialized world. Just because your body is telling you that it has the capacity to stay awake doesn’t mean that your wild animal self evolved to do it.

You are almost certainly not getting enough sleep when there’s diminished natural light. This is hard on your body. It makes you loopy; it overrides your natural systems; it makes you want to eat so so so much Cap’n Crunch. While you may not be able to get more sleep right now, you can acknowledge that you’re probably not getting enough.

Not moving around as much as you usually do is hard.

When it’s cold, we tend to stay inside more often, and commute by car to places that are within walking distance. There are more chairs inside buildings and cars. We sit on the chairs. Whereas there are lots of differing opinions on the health benefits of carbohydrates, there’s near universal consensus on this: movement is good for bodies. A non-comprehensive list of things that movement helps: bones and muscles, heart health, blood pressure, cholesterol, brain function, overall mood, circulation, digestion, metabolism, energy levels, and how good you feel holistically on a day-to-day basis. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, I hope.

But, if you somehow manage to move around a lot in winter, you’re having to go out of your way to do it, and that’s hard. You have to disrupt your baseline routine to get the amount of movement that your not-sleeping-enough body requires.

Am I becoming a broken record? This is hard.

Holidays are hard.

I think that probably our ancestors meant well when they established holidays. Probably our grandparents meant well when they paved traditions for their families. But the underbelly is that having these kinds of rhythms creates big expectations, which means that there are deep wells of emotion hiding behind every loaded corner of the holiday season. We tend to pay attention to what’s missing: what didn’t happen, how we didn’t feel, what we didn’t get. This is normal. And also: it is hard.

Spending energy on complicated relationships is hard.

To that end, the holidays are a time when lots of businesses and schools generally pause operation for roughly two weeks, which means people make plans with their families of origin. Those are some of the most important relationships many of us have — and they are also necessarily among the most complicated. If you’re not having to do a little kayaking around the great rocky obstacles of old family trauma, then you’re probably drawing some pretty dense boundaries (which is also hard; see below). Otherwise, this particular emotional dance is expert-level. It’s going to take a lot out of you.

NOT spending time on complicated relationships, when everyone else seems to be spending time on THEIR complicated relationships, is hard.

If you are intentionally not spending time with family-of-origin, the holidays is a great time to feel like shit because of everything that was messed up about your childhood, and to dwell in the great, existential loneliness that comes with a dark season where everyone you love has left town to sit in front of their respective parents’ fireplaces.

The end of the fiscal year (and academic semester) is hard.

Because we have established a calendar that has twelve months and then starts over, there’s a sense that everything must be completed or tied up by the end of December. In January, the slate clears. But since humans are terrible at looking realistically at the future, and because twelve months is a comically abstract amount of time to Today You, there’s a universal tendency to set unrealistic goals, put them off in mid-year, and then try to get a whole bunch of stuff done all at once before the ultimately arbitrary deadline of the end of the year. When this is mounted on top of all the other extraness of the season, it can become unbearable. I’m at school right now, and 100 percent of my students claimed to have slept two or fewer hours last night. “So much to do,” they said. “Have to get it done,” they said. And I feel their pain; I do. But also, I feel that this is a tragic casualty of the way we’ve collectively agreed to structure the year.

Ultimately, none of this is probably going to change. Yes, there are little things you can do to alleviate some of this pressure: you can plan for this time of year way in advance (I start preparing in August); you can say no to things that feel like obligations; you can stay home when you’re sick, and ask for extensions into the new year; you can buy less stuff, and actively ask people in your life to make donations on your behalf rather than get you anything; you can schedule naps, drink hot tea, and take walks in long coats.

But the main thing you can do, really, is cut yourself some slack. The main thing you can do is understand, fundamentally, that this is a hard time and that is not your fault. You’re overwhelmed, overworked, and spread too thin. You’re drained. Be gentle with your sweet animal self. And: be gentle with people on the train, at the supermarket, who walk their dog when you’re walking to the post box. Say hello. Don’t take it personally when they don’t say it back. The most radical thing you can do this time of year is take what you need as much as you can, recognizing that it won’t always be this way. The year has seasons; we have to ride the wave.

Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart.

Love,

Sophie

Housekeeping

• If you bought a You Are Doing A Good Enough Job Celebration Calendar: first of all, thank you. Second: the printer was supposed to complete the job and I was supposed to pick it up on the day after Thanksgiving, but the date kept getting pushed back. I finally got the calendar boxes YESTERDAY NIGHT. We have printed all the shipping labels for the calendars, but couldn’t pack them until the calendar arrived. I’m bringing them to the post office today (or tomorrow morning at the latest). This is very frustrating, and I’m so sorry for any inconvenience it’s caused you. If you’d like a refund, please reach out and I’m happy to provide it. I will be using a different printer in the future.

• That said: there are a few calendars left in stock! (And other stuff too.) Printing has been such a nightmare that I’m not reprinting them this year like I did last year, so when they’re gone they’re gone.

• The bird painting classes for January currently have about three people in them each! If you’re on the fence because of the cost, email me. I am happy to give you a discounted rate if this is something you’re interested in doing! And I am not just saying that.

• A paid subscription to this newsletter gets you:

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    • Sometimes I put limited runs of things in the shop and the only people who get the things are the paid subscribers because they sell out quickly!

Loose Thoughts:

• It’s snowing a little tiny bit right now! As soon as the snow starts, the winter birds come to my window.

• By the by, I bought an expensive squirrel-proof bird feeder for this winter, and so far it’s been really successful at keeping the squirrels sort of deterred. I love squirrels. But I think they’re really loud in a bird feeder.

• I am currently not getting enough sleep because T has split nights where she wakes up at like 2 and doesn’t go back down until 6. It is really horrible and I feel like I’m losing my mind all the time.

• What kind of lip balm do you use in the winter? I’m all over whatever I can get my hands on, really; I need one in every pocket.

• WHAT COOKIES AM I GOING TO MAKE THIS WEEKEND.

• The school year is winding down and I loved the students this semester — brilliant and weird. I learned from them that absurdism is very big for Gen Z right now, especially in terms of what makes them laugh. You can take that to the bank.

1. Is it racked or wracked? The internet is torn. It won’t give a straight answer to this question. But the origins are different, and I think that’s interesting, so here they are, in case you, too, are curious:

Rack: Comes from a Medieval torture device and means to torture, strain, or wreck.

Wrack: Comes from nautical terms and means to wreck or destroy.