The Sunset Journal

What if you began your day at sunset?

What if you entered your day through a portal of rest and receptivity, through the dreamtime? Five years ago, I began continuously asking myself this sunset question — then asking my clients, my community, and anyone I thought might be interested. Beginning my day at sunset has become an almost daily ritual practice for me. I love how it reframes my day to begin with rest, not activity, to begin with dreaming, not doing.

This question is inspired by our ancestors and how they likely began their day at sunset, not sunrise as we do today. There is well-known Roman commentary from Julius Caesar on how the Celtic Gauls measured time not by the number of days, but by the number of nights. In Irish tradition, the ancestral year began with the onset of winter at Samhain, and the ritual Samhain fires were lit at sunset — again illuminating how darkness comes before light. A unit of time is described in Irish mythology as adaig ocus lá co lí, meaning ‘night and day with colour’. It is the absence of the sun, not its presence, where time begins.

The Sunset Journal is a printed creative journal for anyone who feels inspired to cultivate a practice of beginning your day at sunset. It is infused with the wisdom of our ancestors but for contemporary life. There is much research on the healing benefits of evening journalling, and also on how our perception of time can lead to chronic stress and depression. We need disrupters here, and these ancestral teachings have helped me massively in what can feel like my own time-poor life.

The Sunset Journal will launch this summer with a small print run and ship worldwide.