📝 New Beginnings | A Story of Fresh Starts in the New Year

This gentle story invites you into a quiet morning filled with simple pleasures — exploring a growing tea collection, savouring the first sips in a new mug, opening freshly gifted journals, and losing yourself in puzzles and music. New Beginnings is about the small moments that spark curiosity, creativity, and a sense of freshness, reminding us that every day can offer a chance to start anew. You can read the story below or enjoy the narrated podcast version released January 2, 2025.

👉 Listen to “New Beginnings” as an audio story HERE 🎧

👉 SHOP The Slow Life story-inspired printable greeting cards HERE 🛒

This story is called New Beginnings, and it’s about finding the right flavour, a creative hiding place, and asking questions that don’t yet need an answer.

I thought I might sleep in this morning, but I feel rested and comfortable with the idea of starting my day. There is no to do list waiting for me, aside from staying home and finding tiny things that make me happy.

Looking in my tea cupboard, I’m faced with the only kind of decision I need to make today. Quite the collection is building, and I love each one for different reasons on varying days. Sometimes, a spicy herbal mixture including cinnamon, roasted chicory and cloves, cardamom, nutmeg and black pepper will accompany the mood I’m in. Maybe I’m feeling cozy indoors, but fully awake, perhaps with something artistic on the go, or enthralled in a book that matches the spice. And there are times when a flavour can help to alter my headspace, such as lavender and chamomile when I arrive home and want to slow down, or peppermint to pick myself up.

This morning, I’m already feeling inspired to try new things, so I choose the orange box with a Bengal tiger looking at me from its spot amongst the palm leaves and pottery dishes of pods of carob and vanilla beans. It was a gift from my friend who knows that I have been aspiring to create a tea collection that will parallel her own.

I boil the water and choose the new mug she’d also given to me. I inhale the scent of the square bag of tea and exhale, sure that it will be a flavourful one. As I pour the water, a rich, deep caramel colour seeps out in swirls, curling to the surface and rising towards me in the steam.

I cradle the heat in my hands, turning around to lean against the counter. My kitchen, the dining area and living room are laid out before me. I scan the space, appreciating its offering of almost endless activities to begin.

I smile at the taste of this new tea, in my new mug, and at the thought of new beginnings. What else could be new for me today? With gifts having recently been received, it makes it easy for me to decide. I look under my tree, still sparkling in the corner. Fuzzy fleece bedsheets are a great place to start. I open the package, touching the softness and get them to the washer so they’ll be clean and dry for me tonight. A fresh start even at the end of the day.

Next, I think of something I’d only barely begun yesterday. Someone gave me a puzzle of a castle that looks like something only a fantasy film could produce but I know that it’s real, which makes it all the more magical.

Years ago, my dad had made me a dining table with a top that opens up to reveal another level underneath. A puzzle-lover himself, he never wanted to hide himself away to put one together, but needed to save space all the same. I appreciate this creative hiding place even more, now that I have curious kittens to think about.

I open the tabletop and let the two panels hang down the sides from their hinges. The edge pieces of the puzzle have been separated from the others and put together in their rectangle shape. Now I’m ready to begin filling in the middle.

Before sitting down, I put a new record I’d bought for myself onto my very old, but still very good record player. I have all of the modern gadgets as well, but it’s fun to watch a turntable and to hold the weight of the music in my hands.

I sit with my tea carefully set aside to work at the puzzle’s centre. The castle’s turrets come together, and I picture being in them looking out at the mountains and forest surrounding far and wide. The pieces are so satisfying to click together. Crisp edges that have never been used before. And, as always, with this activity, I get lost in it for at least an hour.

I get up to stretch and to flip the record over to its second side. More tea is in order. This time a bit of peppermint to perk up my senses. I steep it for a long time for a lot of flavour, while snooping around in boxes to see what’s next.

I know just the thing. Aware of my love of writing, a couple of people had gifted me a journal each. Both are beautiful and worthy of being chosen first, so I pick the one that’s within my reach. Its dark purple cover with silver designs embossed upon it invites me to run my fingers over it.

A pen, perfectly matched, was also part of the gift. Still on my knees beside the tree, I write my name and the date on the inside cover, the new pen gliding smoothly over the ivory-coloured paper.

By now, I can smell the freshness of the mint making its way around the rooms. I set myself up at the bistro table in the breakfast nook. I open the notebook, loving the sound that it makes, and slowly turn the base of the pen a few times, watching the point slide gracefully up and down.

A new journal is like opening to the first page of a novel. What will the next words be? What will happen on the following page? It’s fun not to know certain things beforehand. I begin to write; not of things that have already happened, but of things I wish to discover. I ask myself questions, some of which I answer and some that I don’t, leaving them to be answered as the days and months unfold.

I write whatever comes to mind, enjoying each new page as though it were the first. In fact, I start to think of each line as a chance to start anew.

This time of year seems made for new beginnings. But every season can offer that feeling. Every month can offer freshness. Every day, a clean slate. Every moment is another chance to find yourself and to find what makes you happy.

I wish you sweet dreams.