021: january is not a beginning
On winter, rest, and letting the year arrive slowly
editor’s note
Every year, January comes with a lot of expectation. New goals. New energy. New you.
But winter hasn’t finished its work yet.
Across many cultures, the new year doesn’t begin in January at all — some start in February, others in March, aligned with the return of light, warmth, and growth. We’ve largely forgotten that renewal doesn’t happen on command. Change doesn’t happen overnight, from one day to the next, because of the date on the calendar. This moment, in deep winter, is not meant for reinvention. It’s meant for replenishing.
This January issue of the hinter planet is an invitation to release the rush to start a new version of yourself, and let winter be what it is.
what we’re reading
Wintering
This feels like required reading for January.
Wintering reframes winter, literally and metaphorically, as a necessary season of retreat, repair, and conservation. Katherine May writes against the idea that productivity or optimism should be constant. It’s a reminder that rest isn’t a failure of momentum; it’s part of survival.
Traversal
Maria Popova has long written about cyclical time, nature’s intelligence, and the danger of flattening life into a linear progress. Her work often returns to the idea that growth happens underground, unseen. Traversal is a meditation on moving through uncertainty without rushing toward answers. Written as a series of poetic reflections, it explores how we carry ourselves through transitions — emotional, creative, existential — when clarity hasn’t yet arrived. it honors the in-between.The waiting. The work happening beneath the surface. A perfect companion for deep winter.
what we’re watching
Paterson
A film about routine, attention, and the dignity of ordinary days.
Nothing much “happens”…and that’s the beauty of it. Paterson feels like winter: repetitive, gentle, and deeply present. Plus, if you’re an Adam Driver fan like we are, he’s the lead.
Columbus
Stillness, architecture, waiting. Columbus moves slowly, leaving space for pauses and unsaid things. It’s a film about emotional suspension, about staying with what is, instead of rushing toward resolution. Perfect viewing for this moment of the year.
what we’re listening to
Sufjan Stevens
Carrie & Lowell
Quiet, restrained, deeply human.This album is about grief and tenderness without dramatizing either. It feels like true winter music. Best listened to slowly. Preferably while walking, or doing nothing at all.
art that understands winter
Hilma af Klint
Hilma af Klint created her most significant work long before it was understood or recognized; guided by intuition, spirituality, and an internal timeline rather than external validation.
Her work feels deeply aligned with winter energy: creation before visibility, meaning before recognition. A reminder that beginnings don’t always announce themselves.
a lunar note
Not all new years begin in January. The Lunar New Year arrives in February.
Nowruz, the Persian New Year, begins in March — aligned with the equinox.
Many Indigenous calendars mark renewal with the return of light, rather than the depth of winter.
These systems understand something we often forget: January is not the start. It’s the middle.
winter travel, two ways
Winter doesn’t have to mean the same thing everywhere.
deep winter
There’s something so satisfying about leaning fully into winter.
Snow, silence, early nights, little to no plans.
Browse spaces ideal for a quiet winter getaway
toward warmth:
Mexico
Tucked into the heart of Oaxaca de Juárez, Casa de ELLA offers a winter retreat that moves in the opposite direction of cold and urgency. Built with elemental Oaxacan materials, the space feels earthen and intimate — a place where warmth comes from texture, ritual, and shared moments rather than spectacle.
Winter here is lived slowly: lingering meals, mezcal poured, conversations that stretch into the evening. The home extends the world of mezcal maker De ELLA as a lived environment, filled with handcrafted clay objects and subtle invitations to connect, taste, and stay present. A reminder that winter travel doesn’t always mean snow; sometimes it means leaning into warmth, tactility, and human connection.
Madeira
The island softens the season: green landscapes instead of snow, ocean air instead of sharp cold. Winter here feels expansive rather than constricting; an invitation to slow without retreating inward completely.
Set above the Atlantic, Casa da Vargem’s architecture is quiet and grounded, opening outward to sea and sky, encouraging slow, quiet days.
This is a stay designed for presence — for reading, cooking, watching the sunset. Winter here offers space to settle, breathe, and recalibrate at a gentler pace.
Surrounded by gardens and farmland, Quinta da Saraiva feels deeply rooted in Madeira’s slower pace. Winter days here are shaped by nature: picking bananas right off the trees, noticing light, sharing meals made from what’s growing nearby. A place where winter is lived through connection and time spent close to the land.
These trips show how winter travel can take different forms, shaped by place and pace rather than by the idea that January needs to be a beginning.
closing thought
January doesn’t have to be a beginning. Winter is still present, and not everything needs to move forward yet.
community question
Finish this sentence and hit reply… no overthinking:
This January, I’m giving myself permission to ______.
The future is bright.
Any thoughts provoked? Ideas sparked? Any corners of the internet worth sharing? Join the conversation and drop a comment below.
Want to find us in other galaxies?
Interested in being one of our Artists in Residence? Apply here.