What Does a Good Life Look Like?
You can't build a good life if you don't know what you're shooting for
I’m so happy to see you! How to Build a Life is a newsletter by me, bestselling author of 12 (!!) books Laura Jane Williams, going out to thousands of readers bang in the thick of life’s mess and mayhem… who are still trying to find the magic. I’m almost 40, a solo parent by choice, decorate my house like a tart’s boudoir and lift very heavy weights. Those four things are my entire personality 🥰 I really love writing to you here. Hi.
(pssst! My 2022 festive rom-com JUST FOR DECEMBER is a perfect holiday season read. It’s got a prickly bestselling author getting her book adapted into a movie, a hot, emotionally intelligent actor as love interest, a fake dating pact, and castles and snowstorms and hot chocolate. When I was getting that link I also saw that my debut novel OUR STOP is also only £1.99! One day I’ll tell you the order of my favourite books I’ve written. Spoiler: OUR STOP will be at the top.)
I decorated the house for Christmas this week, which by UK standards is early but by US schedules perhaps late. The houses around us took down their Halloween decorations and immediately replaced them with twinkly lights and inflatable Santas - in the first week of November!! - and you know what? I appreciated it. The time felt right to join them.
I’ve made no secret of dreading this impending winter (which is now officially here), but as I did a pre-decorating deep clean I started to think huh, this feels… nice.
Sometimes I clean aggressively, annoyed I have to be doing it, but occasionally it feels like a gift to myself, to take the time to wipe the bin lids and empty the fridge of expired tomato paste and to move the armchairs and dust the skirting board behind them. I listened to a podcast recommend by Jen Carrington as I got sorted, about how your lowest season gets to be your biggest catalyst for reinvention. I don’t mediate but I can appreciate meditative activities, and I let the words wash over me, taking what I needed and forgetting what I didn’t. And something stuck.
What season of your life are you in right now?
That’s what I found myself ruminating on.
The host of this podcast was saying she’d been in the weeds this time last year, but had used it as an opportunity to discard what hadn’t been working so she could move forward lighter. Freer. Easier. Happier. She’d used her metaphorical winter to make way for a gentle spring and epic summer. It hadn’t been pretty, she said - it wasn’t all journalling and hot baths. I relate to that. It’s not a breakdown, it’s a breakthrough, they say. They should add that a breakthrough really does look like a breakdown first, though.
I think decorating for Christmas felt so nourishing because I, myself, am in a winter season. Like, personally. My internal season is aligned with what’s going on out there, and it’s making me pay attention because I am at its mercy. I feel like I don’t have a choice. I am tired. I am so, so tired. I cannot keep feeling this way. I’d like to know how one is supposed to activate change with no gas in the tank. Or is that the point? To just bloody rest?