This is a New Year’s story without sparkle or slogans, just three films, one song, and a sex worker in her living room standing between 2025 and 2026, choosing hope in smaller, truer amounts. 🫶🏽

Sydney has one favourite question in December.

“So, where are you watching the fireworks?”

People ask it the way they ask about Europe in summer or renovations in the Eastern Suburbs. There is always an assumption baked in. Of course you are going somewhere. Of course you are doing something photogenic. Of course your last hours of the year will be framed by a skyline and a bottle.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and as I write this it is 3.30 in the morning on 1st day of 2026, that strange hour where the city feels half-asleep, maybe some still partying, some still at home like me. Sydney’s  weather was kinder than usual on NYE. Cooler. Softer. Twenty-two degrees at most, a light breeze, people out but not frantic, like everyone quietly agreed to step into the year without screaming at it. It felt like the city took one slow breath and let us rest inside it.

In the twelve hours before midnight my phone did exactly what it does every year. Messages arrived gently, one after another. Some were simple “Happy New Year” notes. Some came with fireworks and glittering animations. Others were a sentence or two from people I haven’t spoken to in a while. Thoughtful. Familiar. Kind.

This time I let them sit quietly on my screen. Not because I didn’t care, and not because I felt distant from anyone. I still smiled when I receive them, I wished them the same warmth back. I simply chose a different response this year , silence, softness, and writing. Instead of sending quick replies into the messages, I stayed still and wrote this piece as my way of being with people, just in a quieter way.

I have done my time under these lights:

I have been the woman squeezed against strangers at Circular Quay, pretending the crush of bodies was part of the magic. I have stood on balconies with 360 degrees of the Sydney harbour and stale conversation. I have watched the bridge explode in colour while everyone shouted into my ears:  “I love you!”. I have done the rooftop parties and the “secret spots” that turn out to be no secret at all.

And I have done the quiet version too. Bare feet, takeaway containers, the television tuned to the live broadcast so I could hear the countdown while the real thing rattled the windows.

Spectacle is not new to me. My calendar already knows what adrenaline feels like.

This year, I let the city sparkle on its own.

No cocktails on a balcony. No dress-up. No frantic group chats. I stayed home, in clothes that would never make it to my website or Instagram, with a simple meal that tasted like sanity instead of content.

The television was on, but not the usual New Year loop of hosts yelling over the harbour. December television is normally an endurance test. SBS World Movies is the exception. It feels like the channel for people who still want story instead of noise. So I gave the night to three films, back to back, and let other people’s lives carry me into 2026.

The first film set in winter in an old European town. Narrow streets. A family trying very hard not to say what everyone could feel. The camera never rushed. Nothing exploded. No one delivered a speech that fixed everything. Instead there were small scenes: a father stirring soup too long, a daughter folding a coat that no longer fits, two people sitting on a step while snow began to fall, each pretending they were not afraid of the year ahead.

The second film was hotter. Filmed in Hong Kong. Neon, traffic, late-night food stalls, people running in too many directions at once. The story followed a woman who kept changing jobs and names, trying to outrun her own patterns. At one point she paused in an alley, looked straight ahead and said, “I keep moving, but I keep meeting myself.” Then she laughed, like she had just told a private joke. I rewound that line and heard more in it each time.

The third film might as well have been a dream. A coastal town, a small bar, a band playing to almost nobody. Three characters who had each lost something important sat together without admitting it. They did not fix each other. They shared food, a few songs, and then they went on. Nothing dramatic. Just three lives brushing past one another and leaving faint colour behind.

Three films. Three continents. Three versions of the same message.

Life is not a firework. It is a quiet accumulation.

Just before midnight, I turned the television back to Sydney. I did not boycott the fireworks. I did not roll my eyes at the spectacle. I paused. I let the harbour fill my living room. I watched the bridge ignite while the city shouted its countdown into the sky.

And then, when the colour faded, ABC did what this country sometimes does wonderfully. It softened.

They went straight into Play School singing Auld Lang Syne.

Gentle. Warm. Sincere.

Colourful as typical, sang in happiness, honesty and hope.

Like tucking the nation into bed.

I have always loved that song. The sloppy pub version. The chaotic midnight yelling. There’s even a version with the same melody in Chinese called 友谊万岁 （Friendship Forever）.  Any version. The one sung like memory. The one that honours the fact that some people stayed. Some connections survived. Some history still matters.

It reminded me of a New Year scene in a film I love. Not the glamorous one. The other kind. Snow outside. A quiet apartment. A woman deciding that instead of trying to be impressive, she would simply go to the person she could not leave behind. Not romance. Not seduction. Just loyalty. Just choosing not to let someone feel alone on a night that can punish loneliness.

That has always meant more to me than champagne.

I did not make a New Year’s resolution. I rarely do. The word has been cheapened by gyms and apps and every soulless email that begins with “New Year, New You.”

The only resolution that makes sense for me now is this:

A resolution to keep making resolutions.

Not once a year. All year. Small ones. Specific ones. Ones that refine me instead of repainting me.

I do not need a brand-new self. I need version 18.01, 18.02, 18.03. Quiet updates, not factory resets.

So if I have to name one promise for 2026, it is this:

I will keep rewriting how I live, in pencil, on real paper, often.

Refine how I work, so my hours feel less frantic and more deliberate.

Refine how I rest, so recovery is not something I negotiate with guilt.

Refine how I speak to myself, especially when outside noise gets smug or cruel.

Refine how I show up for people, so generosity does not drain me.

Resolutions for more resolutions. Continuous editing rather than one dramatic declaration hung over a hangover.

Watching those films, I kept thinking about the people who have passed through my life like characters on screen. Some stayed for a whole season. Some only appeared for one scene. Friends now living elsewhere. Family in other time zones. Clients who once booked every month and now live somewhere my phone no longer recognises. People I cared about who simply moved into other parts of their own story.

They feel less like losses now and more like subtitles that flash across certain memories. A tone. A phrase. A way of standing at a window. A kind of humour. A standard I hold for how I let people treat me. They are still here in those small, invisible edits.

Hope, for me, is not fireworks.

Hope is that slow edit.

Hope is knowing I am still changing on purpose. That I did not freeze as the girl who first placed a tiny classified ad, or the woman who built a crooked website on a fat little computer, or the one who opened the door to her first client with shaking hands. I love those girls. I am not trapped as them.

Hope is knowing I can still sharpen how I think about work, money, safety, affection, home, independence. That I can still choose kindness without being foolish. That I still laugh in the right places.

I have joy too. Not the loud champagne kind that advertises itself. Mine arrives in smaller scenes.

The first cold sip of coffee in a quiet kitchen. A ridiculous meme from a friend who knows exactly when to send it.

The way a regular client relaxes the second he walks through the door and tension leaves his shoulders.

Finding the right sentence for a blog entry at midnight and feeling something settle inside my chest.

Catching a breeze on a too-hot Sydney afternoon and thinking, I am still here.

Gratitude has become simpler.

I am grateful for the long-term regulars who walked beside me through different versions of myself. The ones who adjusted as my standards rose instead of pushing back. The past clients who may never book again but treated me with decency when they did. The current ones who make my week smoother, not harder. The future ones I have not met yet who will arrive at the right moment, not the desperate one.

I am grateful for friends who have seen me tired, flat, grumpy, swollen from life, and stayed. For family who learned to understand my choices instead of panicking at them. For acquaintances who read what I write and send a single thoughtful sentence back. For strangers who will never meet me but still believe people like me deserve safety and rest.

And yes, I am grateful for this odd, complicated city. For its harbour that sparkles whether I am looking or not. For its late-night food, its long light, its short tempers, its moments of unfiltered kindness. For the fact that I can sit in a quiet Sydney apartment and watch three foreign films in one night and remember that lives everywhere are messy and tender in ways headlines never show.

So no, I did not chase the fireworks this year.

I watched stories instead.

Stories about people stumbling, recovering, repairing what they could and carrying what they could not fix. 

If you are reading this, wherever you sit in my life, this part is for you.

To clients, past, present, and future, including the ones who behaved well and the ones who sharpened my boundaries: I wish you a year driven by care rather than panic. Fewer frantic messages, more thoughtful ones. Rooms where you can breathe instead of just impress. A sense of being wanted without having to fight for it.

To friends, family, and almost-strangers: I wish you a year of steady change instead of pressure to reinvent everything. At least one night that feels like an art-house film in the best way. A good conversation. A decent meal. A song that fits. Someone beside you who listens all the way to the end of the sentence.

To the wider world, as bold as that sounds: I wish us calmer decisions, slower judgement, fewer shrines to spectacle. More honesty about trade-offs. More softness that does not collapse when tested. Fewer platforms pretending to care while quietly erasing those who do not fit neatly.

And for myself, quietly, I wish this:

That I keep updating my own code.

That I keep choosing rooms that feel like those films, layered, patient, worth revisiting.

That the girl I was in every past New Year would recognise me now and feel relieved.

Sydney can keep its twelve minutes of colour in the sky.

I will take twelve months of being awake in my own life.

Happy New Year.

To you reading this.

To the ones who were here and moved on.

To the ones yet to arrive.

May 2026 give you enough light to see yourself clearly, and enough shadow to rest when you need to.

I will be here, somewhere between the movies and the harbour, still refining, still writing, still choosing what kind of woman I become next.

This piece has no images. Just a video clip. One of my favourite New Year moments ever put on screen. If you know it, you know. If you do not, let it sit gently with you for a few minutes.

Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM1Bhz3G1Q0