Ambition can be exhausting. This is why you should have a ‘filler year’ instead | Hanna Ewens

TTime is elusive: there are whole years when nothing seems to happen, and then there comes a day when it feels like everything is happening at once. I’ve been listening to conversations about resolutions and goals in recent weeks – people wanting to effect change, measuring their progress on the goals they’ve achieved over months. This time last year I had every intention of making 2024 something substantial. But the vague futility of that human urge to make every calendar year “count” was exposed. Not much happened.

I have since come to the conclusion that 2024 was a “filler” year. To me, this type of year is best understood by what it is not: a “big year.” In the latter case, you might be able to check off a milestone on your bucket list. A chance meeting with a future partner can change the course of your life. You can start your dream job, or take on a new role as a parent or godparent. Conversely, a big year can be shaped by a great loss or by a random act of cruelty that redefines who you are. By comparison, a filler year feels empty, insubstantial, and unmemorable.

Why was 2024 a filler year? I’d love to tell you. It wasn’t because we weren’t trying to make it a twelve-month milestone. I worked, rested and had plenty of goals to achieve, but the harder I tried to achieve them, the more they seemed to elude me. I was caught in a developmental Chinese finger trap. I haven’t accomplished anything notable in my personal, professional, or financial life. Time had other ideas about how to spend it, and this, coupled with an economic crisis that means I’m working harder for less reward, decided I wouldn’t progress, wouldn’t succeed and wouldn’t collect £200.

I could give you a few reasons why this happened – the industries I work in are in poor health, friends have been busy making major life changes – but I think these are less important than the underlying psycho-spiritual state that drives a full years seems to be. to indicate. The feeling of treading water felt like a necessary adjustment, and I began to realize that I don’t always have to be moving. The more I leaned into the stasis of 2024, the more I begrudgingly accepted it. If something were to happen, it would happen based on an external force. I started experimenting with the idea of ​​not having to force anything, which became a revelation in its own way.

To be clear: a filling year does not have to be a waste of valuable time. I discovered that such a year can actually bring unexpected benefits. Instead of a breakup or a monumental fuck-up that led to horrific realizations that led to personal growth, I learned and grew more slowly. Every little shift in my consciousness felt nice and subtle. I’ve only been sick once or twice. I was hardly ever tired, probably because I wasn’t burning all my energy. I read some books, watched some TV and kept a lot of diaries. I had the space for free time – personal time – in a way that I had never allowed myself before. What initially seemed like accomplishing nothing actually amounted to spending quality time with family and friends. I stayed with my aunt and uncle and their children for a long weekend. We spent unstructured evenings drinking wine, chatting and browsing through their interior design books to get inspiration for decorating my apartment. Why don’t we do this more, we all said. The answer, of course, is that we are usually too busy.

I was finally put in charge of daily life: food shopping at the big Sainsbury’s, flatpack furniture built, exercise routines completed. The result is that I am now semi-organized and feel mentally stronger, so I can better cope with the year ahead. On those small, boring days, I was grateful for a warm bed, a meal I cooked myself, a great book, or a conversation with a friend without having to write about it in a gratitude journal. My only regret is not spending more time offline. That expanse of nothingness in real life became a vacuum for content to fill, and I spent too many hours scrolling through apps.

When I recently described my filling year to my sister, she didn’t understand. She’s not as internet-brained as I am (although she’s just an extreme. “filled” years, just returned from travelling). “You don’t have to accomplish things all the time,” she said. “What you’re talking about, that is just life.” And I think she’s right. Did our grandmother feel pressure to “level up” every year, to become hotter, richer, more successful, healed, and happier as she headed toward death? No, she spent her time repotting plants in her garden and was inspired by the occasional opportunity to take a cooking class or buy a new beret. Life took place during what I would have been more inclined to call her many “filler years.”

Maybe the sentence is wrong; perhaps what seems like “filler” is actually the essence of a meaningful life. These periods are about learning the experience of simplicity – a quiet year spent with the people and activities we care about, rather than just focusing on achievements or progress that prove to the world that we are worthy of love. In retrospect, 2024 certainly taught me to be less results-oriented. I’m ending this year recovering from the upcoming busy period that will inevitably come at some point. Now when a friend asks me for a life update, I like to tell them there’s nothing to report, rather than, “Where do I start?”