Zara dress (similar)
Zara sandals (similar)
Ellen James handbag
RayBan sunglasses
Linjer rings (c/o) (similar)
Agape Studio earrings (c/o) (similar)
Location: National Back of Greece – Athens, Greece
2023.
If I’m honest, I’m not sure that I ever thought we’d see each other. I was never much of a long-term planner, especially when I was young. The future always seemed remote, somehow – like I’d probably get there, but I never really knew. And since I had no idea what it might look like when I did, planning for it didn’t seem necessary.
And so I find myself in my late thirties, at the start of another new year, in a stage of life that I never really envisaged and for which I made only the most vague plans. Those vague plans were limited to wanting to travel and experience life while wearing beautiful clothes. And write about it, of course. Which means that I’m walking into 2023 doing exactly what I wanted to do with my life, but only because what I wanted to do with my life was pretty unspecific.
It’s not that I wish I’d done things differently. But somehow, the start of this year has me feeling like I’m standing at a crossroads – I can keep doing what I’m doing, and be reasonably happy about it… or I can make a change.
I felt similar ten years ago, although there was a bit more urgency behind the sentiment at that time. We wound up moving to Paris.
…which is not to say that I want to upend my life in 2023, to come up with a new plan from scratch and put it into action. But I do have change on my mind. I’m just not quite sure what shape or form that change will take. After all, I didn’t plan for it. In some ways, it’s daunting, but it’s also liberating. Without a plan, I’m free to do whatever I want with this year, to make it into whatever I want it to be.
Looking back, I can see that I had plans – or a lack of them – on my mind at the start of last year, too. Apparently, even though I’m not one for making resolutions and rearranging my whole life simply because January has come around again, the start of new year does make me reflective. 2023 isn’t a year that has a particular ring to it. The number isn’t auspicious or of any particular note. But that, too, is probably a good thing. We can move forward into it without any preconceived notions of what or how it should be, instead making it what we want it to be. And if I really think about it, more than anything, I want it to be a year that I look back on and think, wow – that was pretty wonderful.
Happy New Year, my friends.
