It's Liminal Time

we're in the in-between space

Welcome to Following Studies — an adventure through subcultures, obsessions, the things we follow & the things that follow us. I’m glad you’re here. If you think someone else would have fun hanging out with us, be sure to share.

There’s not a lot that I’m superstitious about but one of the things that I have come to observe is Liminal Week. It’s a must. It’s that precious time that strings us from one year to the other. It holds us in suspension from where we are to where we are going. It’s typically the week between Christmas and New Years. It’s the week where I want to do everything but also nothing. Reflect and make plans.

One Liminal Week I made an incredible broccoli soup, throwing everything in my pantry and fridge into the largest pot I have, and we ate it for a week. It was indescribable, the broccoli soup of my dreams if I ever did dream about a broccoli soup. I didn’t measure anything, didn’t write down what odds and ends were in it, and I’ve never been able to recreate it. That’s Liminal Week.

There have been years that I haven’t done Liminal Week, or it’s just been a day. Time that it’s been a planned activity - full of clarity cards and Mary Oliver poems - and other years where it’s been just a mindset.

I pushed Liminal Week a bit this year. There was family in town, things to do, and also, somehow heading into this year I felt like there was just a steadiness in what I wanted the year (of what I could control) to look like. So, I pushed the week off slightly and had it start on New Years Day. I rebranded it slightly - here is liminal time. I worked a few normal workdays. I was, dear reader, flexible (gasp). There also didn’t feel like there was the same urgency as there had been other years. But there are a few things I am doing this Liminal Time:

We are eating through the random things in the freezer and fridge. In 2024, I purchased duck and put it in our freezer despite the fact that I hate duck, have never cooked duck and had no occasion for it but there it is, in our freezer. We’re going to eat the frozen gumbo that’s hanging out in there and I’m going to make something with the last of the lentils. We’re essentially going to be getting rid of all the things lingering in our pantry and going into the rest of 2025 as the people we actually are and not the aspirational duck buyers of 2024.

On an organizational note, I’m going to tackle the mound of journals and papers under my desk.

And then there are the things I’ve already done. I journaled in my now annual tradition about River Teeth which I’ve come to interpret as things we want to take with us into the new year (hello sustainable goals, goodbye grind). I reflected on the last year. There were a lot of things I didn’t get to in 2024 but there a lot of things that I did. I’m looked at the year with that context and I gave myself a bit of grace. I read Mary Oliver’s The Journey.

The Journey

by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

So much of that poem spoke to me in other years. But in 2024, it turns out that I had been mending all the while, each week and month. We are walking into some very hard years, but I find that I’m walking into 2025 knowing myself better and caring less if others don’t like what they see.

I’m probably joining the chorus of new year sentiments in your inbox. It’s noisy in mine - it’s telling me how to get a new body, a new morning routine, a new habit, a new goal. It’s screaming tips at me for things I don’t want.

I hope you had some Liminal Time amongst the noise this past week. I hope your entry into 2025 was soft. I hope the weeks ahead are filled with community for you. I hope to write to you often — to be in this space a few times a month, to forgive myself when I can’t and to not let it take too long to be in your inbox again.

Happy Liminal Time friends.