The Ritual of a New Year

Fairhope, January

The first days of a new year never feel like a beginning to me. They feel more like a pause that rare, in-between space where the noise of December finally fades, the calendar resets, and suddenly there's room to breathe again. Room to think. Room to notice. Room to decide how I want to move forward before the world starts making demands.

This year, that pause happens at home.

The Art of Arriving

I've always believed that how you begin matters less than how you arrive. I don't rush into January armed with resolutions or declarations, productivity systems or transformation promises. I start with something simpler: a room. A quiet corner. Warm light. A moment to settle in before anything else unfolds.

My grandfather taught me this, though he never said it directly. He understood instinctively that ambiance equals safety a phrase I've carried for years, even before I had the language for it. He created calm with the smallest gestures: a balcony light left on, a chair angled just so, the slow deliberate spark of a match. You felt settled before you ever understood why.

That philosophy stays with me now, a north star I return to whenever things get too loud.

The Permission to Stay

There's a particular pressure around January the cultural expectation that you should be somewhere else. A beach. A mountain. A foreign city. Somewhere that photographs well and signals fresh starts.

But I've learned that the deepest resets don't require departure. They require presence.

This year, I'm staying close. Fairhope in winter has a quiet elegance to it the bay reflecting pewter skies, the streets empty enough to actually see them, the cafés less crowded, more forgiving of someone who wants to sit and think without ordering a second round.

I take short drives with no destination. Out along the Eastern Shore, windows down despite the chill, letting the landscape do its work. Spanish moss and water and long stretches of road where the only decision is whether to turn around or keep going. These drives aren't about arrival. They're about the mental space that opens up when your hands are occupied but your mind is free.

Mise en Place for Living

As a chef, I think in systems. Mise en place isn't just kitchen doctrine it's a way of moving through the world. Before service begins, everything must be in its place: tools sharpened, ingredients prepped, stations organized. The work flows because the preparation was honored.

The year deserves the same respect.

You don't charge ahead blindly. You don't wing it and hope for coherence. You prepare. You create the conditions for clarity. You arrange your life so that when the moment comes, you're ready not scrambling, not compensating, just present.

In January, I slow my mornings down to a ceremonial pace. Coffee without distraction, brewed properly and drunk slowly. I sit longer than I need to, watching how light moves across familiar rooms, noticing things I've stopped seeing because they're always there. These aren't wasted moments. They're calibrations. They're the work that makes everything else possible.

The Practice of Stillness

Travel, when done right, creates distance that allows perspective. But so does stillness the harder practice, the one our culture doesn't celebrate or understand.

Staying home in January isn't retreat. It's intentional positioning. It's choosing to be exactly where I am instead of halfway to the next thing already. It's recognizing that clarity doesn't require a change of scenery. It requires a change of attention.

I don't fill the days with plans or obligations. I don't schedule the pause away. Instead, I protect these early weeks fiercely mornings that stretch, afternoons that wander, evenings that unfold without agenda.

A simple meal, cooked slowly. A drink made properly, not showily. Sometimes a cigar on the porch, sometimes just silence and the sound of water against the pier. Nothing forced. Nothing performed. The goal isn't indulgence for its own sake it's presence. It's being exactly where I am, fully and without apology.

How Clarity Begins

I've learned that the best years don't start with ambition. They don't launch with vision boards or five year plans or aggressive goals that look impressive on paper but feel hollow in practice.

They start with clarity.

Clarity about what matters. Clarity about what doesn't. Clarity about the difference between motion and progress, between busy and purposeful, between noise and signal.

Home gives me that. Not through escape or novelty, but through familiarity that finally has room to speak. Through the permission to slow down in a culture that constantly demands acceleration. Through corners of my own life that don't ask anything of me except that I show up honestly.

This is how I want 2026 to unfold: measured, intentional, grounded in ritual rather than reaction. Not chasing noise but listening for what feels true. Not performing transformation, but actually living it—one quiet morning, one unhurried evening, one honest reckoning at a time.

The Steady Hand

The year doesn't need a dramatic opening. It doesn't need fireworks or grand gestures or promises shouted into the void. It needs a steady hand, a clear eye, and a quiet place to begin.

This is mine a house in Fairhope, warm light spilling across familiar surfaces, coffee cooling slowly in a cup I've held a thousand times, and the bay beyond the window holding its own counsel while I hold mine.

The world will ask things of me soon enough. Projects will demand attention. Deadlines will assert themselves. The calendar will fill and the pace will quicken.

But not yet.

For now, there's this: the pause before the beginning. The breath before the dive. The moment when everything is still possible because nothing has been forced yet.

I stay home not to avoid the year ahead, but to prepare for it properly. To create the internal space that will sustain me when external space becomes scarce. To remember, before I forget again in the rush of things, what it feels like to move through the world with intention rather than urgency.

This is the ritual. This is how it starts.

Quietly. Deliberately. In a place that knows me well enough to let me be still.

Fairhope in January. My kitchen. My porch. The same roads I've driven a hundred times, suddenly unfamiliar in the best way. The year ahead waiting patiently, as it should.

This is how I begin.