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Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash - Image by Val Marion

We often talk about January as a new beginning. As if the year were opening onto a blank page, clean, available, ready to welcome resolutions and idealized versions of ourselves. The idea is comforting, it gives the illusion of regained control, of a clear before and after. I have never identified with that logic. And even less so today…

- My perspective -

The reality is that January rarely comes after real rest. It arrives after months of accumulated effort, compromises, and sometimes quiet renunciations.

We do not enter a new year « renewed », but burdened. With open mental files, fatigue we have learned to ignore, and desires we have put aside while waiting for « the right moment ». And that right moment often, never comes.

- Lessons from this year -

I learned that forcing things costs more than slowing down. Yet slowing down is not the same as moving backward. It is adjusting the pace so as not to lose oneself along the way.

Endurance is not infinite. Even with discipline, rigor, and sincere determination, burnout can happen. Slowly. Cleanly. Silently. Until moving forward no longer means progressing, but simply staying upright.

There are periods when we progress, and others when we survive. The problem is that we value the former so highly that we feel guilty for being in the latter. Yet surviving is already a form of resistance.

What we call stagnation is sometimes simply management. Managing energy. Managing priorities. Managing what must come first, even when the rest matters deeply.

January is therefore not a « reset ». It is a point of support. A moment to resume what was put on hold, or to continue differently. From a new angle, or with a new method. A different standard, often gentler, but more sustainable.

- What remains -

For Val-Project, nothing disappears. This project was not born out of naïve enthusiasm or a need for visibility. It was born out of a search for coherence. For meaning. For alignment.

This year was demanding. It reminded me that when discipline becomes deaf to the body and the mind, it stops being a driving force and turns into wear. You can be serious without being violent toward yourself. It took me time to truly understand that.

Val-Project is therefore not being reinvented. I want this website to remain a living space. A place to lay down reflections, music, creations. A place that accepts silences as much as momentum. Not a polished showcase, but a lived-in territory. With its hollows, its resumptions, its real movements.

- What evolves -

This year, my energy will focus on two very concrete axes : my music and my weight loss. Not as spectacular goals, but as deep commitments. Personal works in progress that require consistency, not performance.

This will be reflected in upcoming content. Articles will be more embodied, more rooted in those realities. Without injunctions or empty motivational discourse. Just honest words about what is being lived through, what is transforming, and what still resists.

A section dedicated to my music will be added over the course of the year. It will include pieces that are sometimes finished, sometimes fragmentary. Nothing fixed or calibrated. Just something sincere, assumed, and faithful to what I am able to give at that moment.

It is also possible that a new fanfiction will emerge, along with other publications. Not according to an official schedule, but according to momentum, time, and available energy.

Conclusions

This is therefore not a reboot. Rather, a familiar gesture, taken up again with renewed attention. The same tools, but a different pressure in the hand. I now move forward without seeking the perfect surge, nor the reassuring idea that one must always go further, faster, stronger. I rely on what is there, on what still holds.

Val-Project thus continues, not as a showcase to maintain, but as a faithful presence. Something that exists even when everything is not moving.

What comes next will unfold at the pace of what is possible, with consistency, not to shine, but to last.

What do you think?