Sunday, January 17, 2016

Thoughts on the New Year

Here we are over halfway through the first month of the new year; hard to believe.  Apparently 2016 has decided to hit the ground running!  As always, I wanted to keep pace with the new year from the minute it came in and, like usual, I haven't been able to keep up.  So, I've decided to do something different this year.  This year I'm going to set my own pace and be happy with it, no matter how slow or fast I may go.


I enjoy the feelings that New Year's Eve brings.  The nostalgia that comes with thinking about the past year and the anticipation of the year ahead.  There's something very exciting about the clock turning midnight and starting fresh.

Except you're not really starting fresh.  New Year's Day is just another day.  You're not magically different or changed no matter how hopeful you were the previous night.  I've always known this fact to be true but deep down I didn't really want to believe it.  It's exhilarating to think things could be different, better in all the ways you wanted, simply by the change of the calendar year.

I woke up on January 1st the same person I was when I went to bed on December 31st (yet another year I did not make it to midnight!).  And you know what? I'm trying to be okay with that.  Of course I'm not completely thrilled because I was hoping for a bit of that overnight magic but I am very happy with the fact that I'm slowly letting go of my unrealistic expectations of what a new year brings. It's a very hard thing for me to do.


It's okay that I everything I wanted to be different wasn't different at the start of the new year.  Some things will be different in the near future; some things will be different in the not-so-near future.  Some things will be different with very little effort on my part and some things will be different with a lot of work on my part.  My goal this year is to celebrate every little victory, whenever it occurs.  Because they will happen in their own time, not when a calendar says they should.