Resolutions

It is officially a new year. 2021, for many this coming of a new year is the most needed due to the climate of the world around us. Now, I am not stating it one way or another, but it has been a challenging, difficult, and all around a harder year for people. Everyone will interpret this year differently and that is what makes humans beautiful.

Setting aside the stress of the year, I want to focus on New Years Eve, 2021, and resolutions. I have always had an infatuations with New Year Eve and I honestly, I can’t explain to you complete why that is. I plan on trying, but to quote Jane Austen New Year’s Eve “must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions“. New Year Eve celebrations have been the party of the millennium for centuries. Each empire after the next has had their own traditions, foods, and displays of ringing in the New Year.

In the USA, we traditionally watch the Time Square countdown and celebrate with confetti, kisses, fireworks, and champagne. The following day, New Year’s Day, the south, where I grew up. has a few traditions. Cornbread: for gold, Collard Greens: good fortune, Pork: prosperity, and probably the most iconic southern dish on New Year’s Day is the infamous; Black Eyed Peas: wealth. As someone who has never really felt connect to the “south” I have never participated in any of these traditions. My relationship with the location of life has never felt rooted in the traditions of the area.

All to say what does this have anything to do with resolutions? As someone who doesn’t follow any sort of traditions around New Year’s Eve to put it mildly it is my favorite holiday. Over Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the ever famous Christmas. None of these hold a candle New Year’s Eve in my heart. There is something so magical about those precious hours leading, transitioning, and becoming a new year. It’s the closest to time travel we can ever get to. We are moving forward to a completely different timeline, a new reality, a new world at our fingertips. Now, this must sound like some fantasy I have made in my mind, but let’s really think about this.

We as a collective society are always trying to better ourselves, accomplish tasks, achieve goals, improve upon what we already have, change what we need. I am not saying that the world as whole is completely wiped clean at the change of every year, if it was that would pose some very interesting conversation. Yet, in the world we live in currently, the problem with all of these attempts is we never make actual time to make the change. We never stop, focus, and truly set ourselves up for success. As a goal oriented person; I have had life long goals most of my life and the earliest memory is twelve.

To me this is not a time to harp on myself for not accomplishing the goals I had laid down for myself for the past year, but see how much closer I have come to my life long goals. This time of year I refocus my energy, my drive, revise my plans, the best way to execute these into reality. Give myself time to reflect on what I want from my life and how I am going to use this year to achieve that. I know all I am saying sees dream like, but you need to choose what you want your reality to look like. How you want to improve, change, and grow for yourself and how it fits into this crazy world we all live in. This might look like a variety of things, self growth and strength, bring awareness to an important cause, trying some new, learning a skill or talent that has always interested. Whatever you want focus your mind and passion towards making your path.

As for myself my resolutions are pretty consistent year to year because my goals- resolutions are big. Like many this time of year we all say to be healthier, which yes is one of my goals, but not as a number of weight or days in a gym. Just make it more present in my thoughts and actions. I live like a normal American, but I want to be the 70 year grandmother who still swims in the ocean and goes on simple mountain strolls. For the future life I want to live I must continue to work on the life I have now.

The goal- resolution that drives me day to day or week to week. It is only one. It is the oldest one on my list (right next to backpack the Great Wall of China) is to publish a book. I have written a novel, the first in a series. It has taken me years to build the world, write the story, revise it to be the best version it can be, and now add the final edits and packet details for submission. These final steps have been and continue to be the hardest part. Covid- 19 for sure put a set back in my progress, taking away a lot of my creative drive, but I am desperately refocusing my efforts, because I want this. This will happen, I will achieve my resolution, I will publish my book.

With all my drive, passion, and effort I know is reality these things take time, but all I can ask of myself it to move this process forward as far as my mind, body, and soul can take it. Resolutions, goals, bucket lists, whatever you want to call them, you dictate how you wish to achieve them. Don’t view this time of year as failure, but a time of new beginnings and restarts. Set your own pace and see what happens in the new year.