Year of the Horse

Tết 2026. The fire horse charges into the new year with courage, determination, and maybe a red flame or two, depending on whichever gif you’ve been sent by your relatives and friends on WhatsApp, sharing wishes for good health and loads of cash.

Lagging behind, the weary earth dragon crashes over the finish line, burnt out, overwhelmed, self esteem approaching an ATL (to quote Bo Burnham, “that’s an All Time Low, not Atlanta” - although I did leave a little of my will to live in the airport there not two weeks ago).

My adherence to the many traditions of my cultural heritage is piecemeal at best. I barely celebrate holidays other than Tết, my family doesn’t nhậu and my ancestor veneration practices would probably earn me harsh criticism from the aunties, but I have my own traditions nonetheless. My “altar” is kept clean and well stocked, I’m fiercely attached to the number 8, and I have strict rules about cleaning the house before the start of the new lunar year. I don’t invite bad energy into my household when a new zodiac rocks up. I settle debts and try to clear up problems before the big day.

Not so in 2026. On the first day of the new year, as I drag my tired bones back to Edinburgh from a trip to Madrid, irritable and worn down from having to deploy my Work Persona for three days straight, I realise that I’m going back to an uncleaned house. Worse still, I’m hanging onto a container full of baggage from last year, my credit card bill needs some attention, and I have absolutely no feelings of hope for the new year ahead. The world is burning and it’s controlled by billionaires and paedophile apologists. I can barely bring myself to text my friends and relatives, worried they’ll see right through my hollow well wishes. 

The only question on my mind was: if the new year rolls around and you’re stretched too thin, your mental health in the toilet, are you completely fucked for the year to come?

Not willing to be the architect of my own misfortune (mind over matter, right?), I try to talk some sense into myself. A positive mentality shift, surely, will bring me some better luck for the year ahead. I run through my Mental Health troubleshooting checklist.

Have I had enough sleep lately? Negative.

Have I been eating well and hydrating properly? Definitely not.

Have I spent enough time outside? Meh.

Have I been nourished by time spent with loved ones? Not enough - my tendency to withdraw during times of woe is a common pattern.

It’s difficult to describe the disaffection I feel sometimes, being a person who writes mainly about community, when I have the frequent feeling of not being particularly connected to one. Being active in a community is a conscious and, at times, seemingly impossible effort. Like exercise, you know it will sustain you in the end, but getting on with it sometimes feels like wading through glue. 

I remind myself that I have clawed myself out of some very dark places before, by the skin of my teeth. This, too, will pass. Instead of worrying about inviting bad luck into my future, or feeling guilt about my self-isolation, I decide to focus instead on forgiveness. I forgive myself for the house not being clean. For not inviting friends to celebrate over a home cooked meal. For not having my shit together. My passage into the year of the fire horse, I have decided, will simply have to be a slow walk, maybe even a gentle trot - not a gallop.

listening: Our Love | Curtis Harding, Jazmine Sullivan

reading: A Union of One’s Own: Fossil Free Books and the Society of Authors