You don't need a fresh start

Or a fresh haircut

Last week I wrote about a moment in time where I had something rare: an empty diary.

I had been made redundant. I had time. I had energy.

For the first time in years, I had space to finally tackle the laundry list of things I said I’d get to “when things quietened down.”

I had grand ambitions to start afresh.

New routines. New systems. Maybe even a skincare regimen that required more than one product.

There’s something addictive about the idea of a clean slate.

You imagine you’ll be focused. Disciplined. Hydrated.

Finally the kind of person who finishes things and moisturises.

But the fantasy of a fresh start is really just a type of perfectionism — the idea that you can outrun your past self by pretending they never existed.

That if you just try hard enough, organise well enough, or download the right Notion template, you’ll finally out-sprint the part of you that always messes it up.

And it’s not just redundancies. It can be a Monday morning. A new year. A milestone birthday. A hangover.

We think: “I’ll start over and get it right this time.”

But here’s the thing:

You don’t get to start over. You only get to start again.

Same life. Same habits. Same brain that thought reorganising your wardrobe counted as momentum.

In his essay, There’s No Such Thing as a Fresh Start, Oliver Burkemann puts it like this:

"The person attempting to leave the past behind, by making a fresh start, is one who's been completely shaped by that past. The self you're seeking to transform is the same one that's doing the transforming."

You’re basically Homer Simpson trying to pull himself out of quicksand with his face.

You can’t escape your life to begin a better one. You’re already in it.

And honestly? That’s the good news.

Because change doesn’t come from pretending you’re someone else. It comes from deciding to move forward as you are.

The person who wants to start fresh is also the one who procrastinates, spirals, panic-Googles “how to launch an online course,” and then takes a nap instead.

Which is annoying. But also kind of great.

Because once you give up the fantasy of starting fresh, you finally get to start for real.

Not perfectly. Not with everything lined up. But here. Now. In the middle of the mess.

Every version of you — the tired one, the overwhelmed one, the one who just lost 45 minutes to Instagram — is invited.

You don’t need a clean slate. You need a next step.

So no, I didn’t transform into a newer, shinier, more optimised version of me during redundancy.

But I did learn something useful:

The future doesn’t require a reinvention. Just a small move from where you already stand.

There’s no dramatic reset.

No shaking of the metaphorical Magna Doodle.

There’s just this moment.

Which is already underway.