I rise and shuffle stiffly from my bed to the new bathroom.

My fingers graze the soft plaster on the wall where there is nothing at all – no light switch, just my muscle memory. In the dark, I grope towards the little sink.

In the newly painted kitchen, I smell the beans, fill the coffee carafe and punch the soft button; there is such comfort there.

I am a spirit, floating through our new place, noting, testing things out, treading lightly across the unfamiliar hall.

Later, I drift across the kitchen with fresh laundry and move into the bedroom that smells yeasty like bread, or like old homes.

It is not a new house.

Tiny cracks in the the fireplace mortar, I imagine mice droppings in the walls. A paint drip that I know I didn’t make.

I run the vacuum across soft oak floorboards where I uncover tiny dinks and protruding nails that snag at my socks.

But always the dishes; warm water is the same anywhere.

The dry, cracked skin of my hands feel tight and sore as they press into the yellow sponge that catches the crumbs as it moves across the pitted, ceramic countertop.

The water runs through my fingers at the tap, like the thin, slippery beads of a rosary.

I flip the lid of the same blue pan, to rinse it once again, watching the foam run clear in the shiny sink.

Each task, done a thousand times, but now in a new old place.

It is a new year.

I clip the doggie calendar onto the magnetic fridge and write a few notes on the clean January page.

It seems to me that the challenge is keeping it all new.

These jobs we do, the mornings we putter and the days we structure, and the nights, when we cycle though the tv listings, again and again, looking for a fresh stream.

This year, my birthday, 61, and mostly the numbers mean nothing.

Until they do, and I wake at 2 am and wonder how they add up.

I read somewhere that our negative thoughts and events carve sharp pathways in the brain, while positive ones are harder to recall.

With this, I call up the mountains from a few years ago, and soothe myself back to sleep.

It can’t always be an option, I know this, but when it works, I take it.

I think I am trying out the Danish expression of putting the spoon in the other hand – to switch up the tiniest of tired movements just a tad.

So today, I escape the bungalow and find a second space, the public library, to try to write. (Instead of staring at the same surroundings, I’ll write about them!)

Attempting a pivot, to grasp a new sensation in the old.

Yes, happy old new year it is.

So, spoon in hand, I move forward (or not).

Anyway, I feel the shift – subtly awkward but a teeny bit exciting, too; it is fresh.

And so, moving onward – keep writing, I say – do it any which way you can.

Keep writing, just write.