It probably started when I was fat and perpetually single in high school. As one year would come to an end and a New Year would appear on the horizon, I’d have the Serious New Year’s Pep Talk with myself. “This year is going to be different, Katie. You’re going to have a fun New Year’s Eve with all your friends, and this is going to be the year you transform from a weird, introverted caterpillar to an outgoing, desirable (and maybe a little slutty to make up for lost time) butterfly. This is it. Don’t mess this year up like the last one.”
I think most of you can probably relate when I say that I feel this weird pressure to make plans to do amazing, mind-boggling, inspiring, life-changing things on the cusp of a New Year, and when my yearly slate is wiped clean and a new cute puppy calendar gets hung, I also seem to completely forget all of the good things that I did in the prior year.
I’ve noticed that one of the main sources of New Year’s pressure surrounds determining your New Year’s Eve plans. There’s a strange, subversive belief that ~how you spend your New Year’s Eve is how you’ll spend the whole year!!!~ and it’s like, no. Are we really superstitious enough to believe that if you spend New Year’s Eve at home in your sweatpants watching Ryan Seacrest banter with D-list co-hosts on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve that you’re doomed to have a lonely, pathetic year? Conversely, if you get a hotel room and go to some crowded New Year’s Eve party wearing a cocktail tail dress you’ll wear once and spend the evening clinking glasses with everyone wearing a party hat and kissing someone special at midnight, then you’re automatically guaranteed all the promotions, marriage proposals, and happiness in the new year? I mean, I don’t know if any scientists have studied this phenomenon, but it sounds like it has the makings of an article for The Onion (Man Attributes His Growing Net Worth to Raging New Year’s Day Hangover).
I get it. I feel it, too. The start of a new year is inspiring and exciting, and no matter when it hits you, we each have that moment where we think, “This could be the beginning of something,” and it feels so important to make it special and memorable. But all the hype surrounding your NYE manicure, finding safe transportation, and doing something epic has this way of making your current year existence feel like a pile of dog crap. Nothing feels like it’s enough, whether it’s your NYE plans or your resolutions. You start thinking about everything you didn’t do in the past year, and you look to the next year like it’s a life vest with the power to save you from your own mediocrity.
Can we stop? This is going to sound cynical, but the start of a new year doesn’t have to be a big deal if you don’t want it to be. Falling asleep before midnight isn’t a bad omen. Don’t have regrets about skipping the champagne. Other people’s resolutions are exactly that: other people’s resolutions; you don’t have to keep up with the Joneses and vow to lose 50 pounds or save a million dollars. I think we’re missing the point. You can join a gym in January or start a new budget, but I think we should be using the start of a new year to remind ourselves that we can start something big (or even something medium or something small) at any time. Each new day is an opportunity to live our lives on our own terms. We can take steps toward our goals whenever we want. The start of a New Year should serve as a reminder that we’re empowered to do amazing things, just okay things, and no big deal things all throughout the year. It should remind us of how far we’ve come.
This New Years, don’t let the great things you haven’t done yet make the things you have accomplished seem unimportant. (And don’t let someone’s swanky NYE party pics make you feel like a loser for staying in with Ryan Seacrest, either.)
