I enjoy December for the sense of the year coming into land. There are well-worn cues of festive street-lights, carol concert rehearsals, and the putting-up of the Christmas tree. I like the steadiness of having an advent calendar to open each day, and the opportunity to embrace the darkness.
This year has been the same, but for a slight feeling of having put my slippers on the wrong feet. A pending work restructure in combination with a housemate who is in process of moving out, has altered normal rhythms. Advent had less of my attention. There were even days that I forgot to open my advent calendar.
While there is uncertainty ahead in 2025, I’m feeling content about welcoming what’s to come. I don’t need to have certainty to be intentional about what I’d like to do and to make exciting plans.
This year I continued with parkruns, reading (60 books this time!) and daytrips with F+M. I also joined a co-working space after realising my need for more structure and separation for my work. I go there 3 days a week and love it.
In July, I started strengths-training classes and getting up (initially in the light!) at 5.50am a few times a week. I assumed this might be a short-lived venture, but at least it would mean I could let go of my goal to do 20 press-ups knowing I had tried. Instead, I have found the process of starting something new and where I felt very out-of-my-depth to be really worthwhile.
Strengths-training has improved my posture and energy levels, but it’s also changed my self-understanding. When we needed to move a neighbour’s heavy furniture recently, I confidently volunteered to help. I now move stacks of chairs easily. Taking the hoover up and downstairs does not register in my brain as an effort. I can carry a toddler for 10 minutes without my arms getting tired. I haven’t identified with being strong before, but now I know I am.
Also, as of yesterday, I finally managed my 20 press-ups. It is one of the goals I feel most proud of reaching.
I’m also proud of achieving my goal of trying stand-up. My choir holds open-mic nights after performances which I knew would be an ideal ready-made (and kind!) audience. While the build-up was terrifying, I enjoyed myself so much more than I thought I would. Making people laugh is exhilarating, and I think it might be something I plan to do again.
At the start of the year I wrote that I wanted the year to be about “unpretense”. This isn’t even a word, but it’s a sentiment which captures a quality that I really admire in others. I love spending time with people who are up front in owning who they are, foibles and all. People who know the daily peace of loving plainly.
“Unpretenciousness” means leaving behind feelings of self-consciousness and accepting the inevitable vulnerability of showing up as you are. For me this year, this has looked like making suggestions at work, even when they might be rejected. It’s meant owning my competitiveness and “playing to win” the game of musical chairs at Molly’s 30th, however undignified. It also means sharing moments of irritation and sadness rather than trying to circumvent them on my own.
Dave Tomlinson writes that the meaning of faith is “to entrust ourselves to life’s immensity“.
He continues,
When we find the courage to live, to embrace new possibilities while at the same time risking further disappointment, we grow spiritually.
To my mind these sentiments are good alternative definitions for “unpretense”.
Children’s author Katherine Rundell (in her delightful quick-read “Why you should read children’s books even though you are so old and wise“) also talks about unpretense when she says,
“In a world which prizes a pose of exhausted knowingness, children’s fiction allows itself the unsophisticated stance of awe.”
In other words, in a world of pretense, there is relief to be found in unpretense—an authentic willingness to shed the layers of “knowingness” or self-protection that can stifle our growth and joy.
All in all, I’m ending 2024 feeling grateful for this last year, and expectant for the new one just about to begin. I hope the spirit of “unpretense” will follow me there.
Happy New Year!
thejoyofrachel 
I like the thinking behind unpretense, and agree that meaningful interactions can really only occur when there is an ability and a willingness to be open and to be ‘unpretensive’. It means that we don’t feel the need to have answers for everything, but a thirst for discovery or at least exploration through discussions with those we trust.
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