You are meant to celebrate time passing at the exact moment you become most aware of how little of it you have actually inhabited.

Realising that your past self was sincere, and that sincerity still wasn’t enough is uniquely destabilising. It dismantles the comforting narrative that failure only happens when we don’t try. Sometimes you try. Sometimes you try intelligently. Sometimes you even try bravely. And still, the year ends before you are ready.

You feel it as a low-grade agitation. A tightening. A peculiar restlessness that is not quite regret and not quite ambition, but some irritating hybrid that keeps you awake at night while being useless during the day. People call it end-of-year reflection to make it sound like a spa treatment. It isn’t. It’s an audit. And like most audits, it... See more

What I am talking about here is pre-New Year anxiety, which is quieter, sharper, and harder to outsource. It’s the anxiety of unfinished business, unlived selves, unresolved desires that did not politely expire just because you were busy.