#13: What kind of 'everlasting' am I building?

On living with intention and making real work of new year's resolutions

Last night was twelfth night, or the last day of Christmas. I celebrated it by laying a picnic rug on the floor next to my Christmas tree and playing trivia with my family over a dinner of meatballs, mash, greens and gravy, and a dessert of chocolate pudding and ice-cream. The tree had been a simple source of joy for me for the last few weeks and I wanted to give it a proper send off before putting it back into our attic space. It was a perfect end to the season.

I always take my tree down on the 6th of January, known as the Epiphany in the Gregorian calendar. In western churches, the Epiphany commemorates the visit of the Magi to pay homage to the baby Jesus. In the east, it commemorates His baptism in the River Jordan, and there are a number of rituals to celebrate it, all with a sort of ‘dunking’ theme. Families head to church with bottles of water, which they place before the altar, and during the service a priest walks up and down the aisle sprinkling those present with holy water. When the Mass is over (or after communion if you’re an impatient old lady), everyone collects their bottle of water and goes home, sprinkling the water around their house, in their gardens, and on their Christmas tree before putting it away. You could say it’s our equivalent to sage.

bysarahayoub

A post shared by @bysarahayoub

Levantine Christians from Lebanon, Palestine and Syria also make zlabyi and ouwemet for Epiphany. In my family home (every region does them differently), the zlabyi were big pieces of crispy fried dough, and the ouwemet were little balls (similar to donut holes) dunked in ater, or sugar syrup. My mum would make a huge amount, which I’d gorge on for days afterwards, my fingers sticky with syrup until I washed my hands, knowing it would be mere moments until I eventually went back for more.

I am thinking about this particular part of my Epiphany experience in relation to other aspects of my life, especially because today is when the festivities are over and my new year begins, and the resolutions for the year ahead must be more dutifully followed. Will I actually see my resolutions through, or will I go back to my old and easy habits, like I go back for more ater-dunked donut holes?

Making real work of new year’s resolutions

Over the last few months, I found myself describing modern life as untenable on more than one occasion. In the two years leading up to my use of that particular word, I was increasingly overwhelmed by the detritus of everyday life that had manifested in clutter around my house; the way in which the home accounts I followed on Instagram started spruiking things many of us did not need to buy via Amazon shopfronts; the role of influencer culture in perpetuating the optimisation sinkhole and the way it which it distorted our views of reality. My ten-year-old daughter somehow amassed ten lip balms without me realising then asked for another one; I realised she was watching GRWM videos on YouTube and probably thought having a stash of them at her age was entirely normal. My friend spoke to me about resisting the temptation to ‘upgrade’ her Christmas tree and I thought about a time when I had thought the same thing. My mother’s garage started looking like a project as opposed to a car space; I watched an Instagram reel of an attic makeover into a cool kid’s bedroom and thought about how I felt like I hadn’t given my children a nice enough childhood because their bedrooms have never looked as fun as the ones in the video. I spent a lot of time in therapy telling my psych that the emotional part of my brain felt like it wanted more!more!more! while the rational, grounded part of me knew I lacked nothing and the two sentiments were in such conflict with one another I felt like I was torn in two.

All around me, everyday people, young and old, were in danger of no longer being happy in their homes because they were consuming media that subconsciously told them those homes weren’t big enough, nice enough, tidy enough. Everyone’s style started looking the same and we lost our individuality in pursuit of ‘trends’ that changed faster than the seasons.

We probably lost lots of money to this way of living too but I am not sure if we all realised. The genocide in Gaza prompted me to think about the kind of world I was contributing to and whether I was leaving it better than the way I found it. I found myself wishing I made more money, not because I wanted a bigger house or a yacht or a Birkin (I’d love a Birkin, ngl - see the contradiction?) but because I wanted to share my views without the risk of losing my job / donate more time and money to the causes I was passionate about / start some sort of scholarship so another aspiring writer from my community didn’t have to hustle so hard in this industry / send money to Lebanon that actually made a difference to people’s lives. In participating in this overly-consumerist culture, I was holding myself back from building a future where I had a bit more financial freedom.

Needless to say, I arrived at 2025 desperate to make real change. I had arrived to 2024 much the same way, though perhaps the clarity around what that change might look like was not there. As I was writing this post, I went back to my 2024 notebook and found that I had drawn a mindmap and written down some words I wanted to live by. They included quotes like “good work begins with clean and tidy surroundings” and “a home with fewer possessions is more focused on those who live inside it” (attributed to Joshua Becker). I wrote that clutter:

• was overstimulating

• raises my cortisol

• is hard to deal with

• is a constant to-do list reminder

• makes cleaning harder

• and clashes with my cravings for order.

But although I took some small steps to a simpler, less stuff-filled life, I don’t think I did enough about it. 2024 felt much like the year before it, in that I wanted to change but everything I did felt very superficial and basic.

Which is why I’ve decided to change my approach this year. I’ve replaced the list of yearly resolutions with an overarching goal of using up what I have, plus two goals for the month of January (take my vitamins; implement a cleaning routine), a plan to build on those in February, then add something new in March (stop taking the phone to bed) and so on. Building new habits with smaller, more actionable steps, I figure, might make lasting change more achievable.

So how did I begin? By banning myself from buying new beauty products until I completely finish what I own in each respective category. Beauty products are a special beast because they

• don’t take up too much space

• are a lot more compulsive as a purchase (you don’t have to worry about them going with anything you already own and are less expensive as say, a new pair of shoes, so you more readily add to cart)

• still give you the dopamine hit (the Lipstick Effect is an economic theory about the rise in affordable luxuries in economic downturns)

• look good on everyone. They are so cleverly-marketed too, especially in the age of social media and the lack of transparency around what people are actually doing to their faces to look as good as they do in photos. But I digress.

So yesterday morning I went around the house and tallied up all my unused beauty products. Many of these were accumulated thanks to press packs and gift bags from my work as a freelance journo, and even though I had given plenty of items away, I still had a lot, like two bottles of fake tan, four brand new lip balms, four cleansers, two eye-creams, five hair growth serums, three exfoliants, three mascaras and more. And a whopping 12 (!!!) serums. Seeing the tally on my page was extremely confronting, especially because I had willingly purchased some of those items while knowing that the science around skincare is actually very simple, and spending my money on them was taking away from the simpler, more abundant, soft-girl life I wanted for myself. My beauty products weren’t just taking up physical space, but mental space too: if I use up everything I have, I thought, and work with what is already there, then I am freeing myself up to make decisions about other things, or to just enjoy my life and not make decisions about these things at all, like what to do with them or if they were any good etc. (Plus in my lazier girl moments I realise that the less I put on my face the better.)

It's not just about the beauty products of course (I have two pairs of slippers) but a matter of using what I have more broadly. The arborio rice, the coarse semolina, some random chocolate powder with medicinal mushrooms in it, the ‘fancy’ French crackers I’ve been saving. Using it all up before handing a card over to accumulate more, or accepting that I am just not the person who will be taking collagen powder everyday or even every week (I have about three boxes of sachets).

Some other things I am slowly working towards:

• Less catch-ups with friends that involve a lot of eating and a lot of money. If you’re one of my friends, let’s go for a walk instead. We will get endorphins pumping, save our $$$ and still fit into our pants as we (I) approach those perimenopausal years.

• Saying no. I am a people-pleaser so this is hard. But I am trying.

• Less time online. This is tricky because I need social media to sell books, but I guess I want to be more intentional about how much of it I say yes to. There are people on there I am following out of obligation, and they’re probably following out of obligation too. There are people who watch every single one of my stories but never interact, people whose values are at odds with my own, and probably people who follow with not the best intentions. I really wish I could be brave enough to “just delete them” as Caoillain writes in this newsletter. (Also relevant to our online lives: this article on posting less by one of my favourite substackers, Anne Helen Petersen, which is interestingly at odds with this one, the thesis of which also has merit).

• Box-breathing, wardrobe itemisation (so I wear what I have instead of buying new things), borrowing over buying, and more intentional use of my private health extras, plus a bunch of other things in this listicle of mine here.

• Sticking to the things I know I like and only acquiring those things (or not being wooed by others). After years of owning so many teas, for example, I have found a black tea brew that I love (I’ve told you about it before). I don’t need any other tea, nor do I need to waste time or space or hope on trying others. The one I have suffices. This can be applied to almost anything and eventually I would like to do this with skincare, makeup and clothes.

• Understanding that it doesn't have to be a big year filled with big things, and that I don't have to do a highlights post at the end of it justifying how I spent my days to people.

• Getting my eyebrows done more frequently, because they really open up my face. I go every 3-4 months now.

Some things I would love to make time for, but they require more effort:

• Learning how to sew, so I can hem my own pants and dresses. I am trying to be more sustainable and I’ve had such a fun time looking online for preloved things, but they sometimes need a couple of tweaks and it would be good to do them myself. Hemming pants at the alterations place seems like a such a rip-off sometimes.

• More research work. This is tricky because my casual academic position is teaching only, and I am itching to get into some research. But I also can’t afford to do that work in an unpaid capacity, unless there’s something I feel really compelled to work on.

• More robust journalism projects, on deeper and more hard-hitting things. But again, this is hard as a freelancer with limited resources. Harder still if you're somewhat burnt out, as I feel I am.

• Writing a novel and investing more time into this substack, should it become my home away from Instagram.

What about you? What are you working towards? I would love a response or few in the comments because I always find other people’s resolves inspiring and intriguing. Until then, I leave you with the traditional Levantine greeting reserved only for Epiphany day, which is “deyim, deyim”. It means ‘everlasting, everlasting’, and it’s supposed to bestow peace and prosperity on the listener. In my case, I’d also add a little nudge to you think about the future you are building with each day that passes this year. I’ve always taken the greeting for granted, but now it has prompted me to think about my new year more intentionally, and what I really want to set in motion for my future self, or for my new everlasting.