171.I'm not here to talk about New Year's resolutions. You're welcome.
A text about knocking over the Christmas tree, another one about making pumpkin soup and another one eating sausage and eggs seeing the sunrise all while being thankful for winter meaning pak choi.
I wrote a whole essay about my take on New Year’s resolutions and then realized that I couldn’t bring myself to share a post on the topic. My inbox and brain have been flooded with people’s New Year’s resolutions—lists that aren’t lists and resolutions that aren’t resolutions—and what else can possibly be said about it? I am the same as everyone else, and that’s freeing, but you don’t need to read about the goals I have for 2025.
This morning, I was wide awake by 4:15 a.m. and couldn’t fall back to sleep, which, trust me, is my specialty. I can fall asleep anywhere at any time, but this morning, life had other plans for me. After giving in to the fact that I was, in fact, extremely awake,I stopped forcing my eyes shut and decided to embrace this strange reality. I drank a cup of tea and read my book in bed and once I saw that it was 6 a.m., I decided to get up and make today’s lunch: pumpkin soup.
I went downstairs to the kitchen, put on Gracie’s album, and started chopping—onion, garlic, carrots, leek, potato, chorizo, and pumpkin accompanied by a cinnamon stick, the magic touch. A heavenly combination, in my opinion. While that boiled, I washed up and placed two sausages in the oven for breakfast. During this morning’s soup-cooking session, I knocked the Christmas tree over, and, well, it was a mess, but it was six o’clock in the morning—who cares? I had all the time in the world to clean it up and take off all the decorations. Luckily none of them broke.
I wasn’t planning on taking the tree down until after Spanish Christmas (the Three Kings on the 6th of January), but, again, life had other plans for me. Now, I have an empty space in my kitchen and a pot full of pumpkin soup.
I look back and can see myself a few weeks ago, still in autumn, full of pride telling everyone that this year the cold wasn’t going to affect me. I had acclimatized and was ready for winter this time around. The temperatures were dropping but I was unaffected. After four real winters living in the countryside, I thought I was finally ready to say, “I love winter,” and you know what? I was naïve. I was warm, and I got ahead of myself.
As I see the temperatures drop a tiny bit more every day, I wonder what the hell I was thinking. Well, I know what I was thinking—I was imagining a warm winter because it was still autumn and just like everybody else, I was telling myself that “winter had arrived” forgetting that they’re two whole different seasons. We tend to join them together as if they were the same thing, and they’re really not. I check my weather app every day to see how cold it is and whenever I feel a sense of doom, I check how cold it is in Minneapolis, where one of my best friends lives and I see -15 degrees Celsius and I compare it to my ridiculous 1 degree Celsius and tell myself to grow up. It does help but it’s still cold though.
In autumn (which is not winter), a hoodie under my puffer jacket was enough to keep me warm. Now, I’m layering like an onion to avoid freezing to death and have had to bring out the gloves along with the hat and scarf. I am not ready for winter, but it’s already here, and I’m already freezing. Is anyone ever truly ready for this season? Are there really people that feel as much joy in winter as I do in summer lying on a Spanish beach? Anyway, the good news is that I have a kilo of pak choi in the fridge, and without winter, there would be no pak choi.
As I finish typing this, having blended the soup and eaten my plate of sausage, fried eggs, and homemade sourdough bread, the sun is coming up. I looked toward the kitchen door and saw what looked like a spotlight shining outside—a big blueish light. I thought, “How strange—I wonder if the neighbors have turned on their big outdoor light that faces our house?” And that’s when I realized that it was the sun that had been turned on. Right on time, 8:20 a.m.
I can’t remember the last time I was awake to see the sunrise. I usually aim to get up by 9 a.m., but I can’t say I’ve accomplished that lately. It’s been more like 9:45 a.m., but I guess that’s a pro of not working for someone else. My heart goes out to my friends and family who wake up at 6 a.m. to go to work, although maybe they enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed being awake since four this morning. You know what they say: “Join the 5 a.m. club and see your life improve”, “The world is asleep and you get it all to yourself” and “I love the silence and spending time alone”. In part, it’s true, I truly did enjoy it, but is it enough to get me to wake up every day at this time? I’m not sure, but today, it was fun.
While we’re on the topic of “winter”, I’d like to tell you that my friend
and I have a podcast in Spanish called FRAGMENTOS, and in our last episode we spoke about winter as a season and wintering as a process inspired by ’s book titled Wintering. You can subscribe to our Substack, listen to our podcast in the Substack podcast section and/or follow along via Spotify or Apple podcasts.We choose a non-fiction book written by a woman and take our favourite fragments (hence the name) from the book and build our episode around them. We talk about the author and her life, her work and the chosen book. From there, we use the fragments as our backbone to share our opinions and experiences on the topic.
You can listen to our latest episode here:
I guess this section is just me telling you about the people I love online and those people tend to be the same people, so sorry for being repetitive and sorry to the people I tag all the time, but what can I say? I’m loyal and it’s real admiration.
- with Slutty new year.
- con Regar cuando no llueve.
- con Wrapped en la puerta.
- with 2025 tech resolutions.
@myself and
with PODA.SERVER Nº6.- con No era mi intención.
- con El oficio de la magia.
And we have to stop at 7 because it’s my favourite and my lucky number, if that exists.
If you enjoy reading POMELO and would like to support my writing, I have turned on paid subscriptions. You can expect a paid post every last Monday of the month and extra posts I share throughout the month when I feel inclined to do so. To everyone who has already upgraded to paid, thank you (so) much.
Me ha parecido tan reconfortante y tan acogedor. Una delicia, pecando de sonar moñas.
Linda Emily🤍