18/01/2026
Stay for the Stretch n.5 by
We’re halfway through January, and it has either felt like a decade or a second. The holiday hangover—whether literal or metaphorical—is (hopefully) starting to lift, and routines begin to peek back in. That strange liminal space between Christmas and New Year’s—the one the internet has memed into oblivion—finally loosens its grip. You know the one: a wrinkle in the space-time continuum where you don’t know what day it is and can’t remember the last time a vegetable crossed your path because you’ve been on a steady cheese diet for seven days.
For some people, the new year is about resolutions or goal-setting. A clean slate. A fresh start. Or—god forbid—a juice cleanse.
Here’s a small confession: I don’t do any of this.
Because the truth is, we can begin again whenever we want. January 1st doesn’t have a monopoly on renewal. We can begin again on July 23rd. Or a random Tuesday. Or in the middle of a moment when something quietly clicks—or doesn’t.
We can decide that something is done—whether it’s a job, a relationship, a habit, or even a thought that’s been looping endlessly in our minds. And then, just as simply, we can begin again. Because everything ends—even your 225th push-up in the middle of my class.
The end of the year threw me for a loop in a way I hadn’t experienced before. I unexpectedly spent Christmas in New York, eating Doritos alone, instead of sitting around a table in Italy, passing bowls of tortellini in brodo with friends from both my Italian and New York worlds. A series of personal events felt like a full-on nervous-system wrecking ball.
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