Every holiday season, with the coming of the much
anticipated New Year, I ponder the previous year’s decisions, mistakes and worthwhile
events. I think about all the times I did things that were meaningless, all the
moments that I just let pass me by because I was feeling too lazy, too
unwilling to conquer the world. I think about all those fleeting seconds that
dissolve into the universe and cringe when I realize that I can never get them
back. In those moments, I can’t help but wonder: was I really living? Was I
really doing all the things I wanted? Was I doing things that were profound and
life changing? Or was I just wasting time?
Every year, I vowed passionately to make changes but was I
really doing it? Was I actually even trying? As much as I hate to admit it, sometimes
the hectic ebb and flow of daily life is exhausting. Who, in the real world of
2 pm Starbucks runs and peak hour traffic, has the time to go out and better
themselves? Certainly not a green-eyed crazy person like me.
The truth is that with the coming of each New Year, we are
given a chance to start fresh, to stay relevant, and to become those people
that we’ve always wanted to be. We are so graciously granted the opportunity to
be better, more formidable people. We’re given the chance to begin again and
make changes, to rectify all those misshapen situations, and to right all of
our wrongs.
And every year, all of this begins again. It’s the “New
Year, New Me” phenomena. People try like crazy to lose weight and stop drinking
and meanwhile, I’m over here working really hard to get the word “fuck” out of
my vocabulary bank. I have visions of my beautiful godmother, who has a voice
like Patsy Cline, tell me as a child: “Oh no, baby. That’s the MOTHER of bad
words.” And yet, here I am every day, working it into my daily language like it’s
my actual job.
Isn’t it nice to
think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet? –L.M. Montgomery
Ever since I was a little girl, I have had this absolute
fascination with the New Year. Something about the New Year is just so inviting
and exciting; it gives you the freedom to start over, to redesign yourself. My
love affair with the clean slate has always been prevalent and I feel like I can
remember almost every single one.
One year, when I was in high school, a gentleman friend of
mine called me to tell me that he loved me; that he couldn’t let another day go
by without letting me know. “Something about the New Year,” I could hear him
smiling through the phone, “it makes you want to be honest.”
I always thought it was the sweetest thing, how he picked up
the phone and just called me. There were no emojis or misconstrued text
messages. I wasn’t sitting there searching for the meaning of what he said
because texting can be a very hard medium to grasp. It was just him and me; his
voice and mine on a crackly cell phone.
Granted, this dates back to prehistoric times. It was the
days before the existence of IPhones and Androids. We just had big Nokias with
a Hava Nagila ringtone back then.
Some years later, I had less of a romantic experience. The
details aren’t terribly important other than that I was pretty heavily invested
in a man who treated me like a second class citizen. Among his many exciting
attributes, his most accomplished by far was pathologically lying. And on New
Year’s Eve in particular, he claimed to be at work when he was actually out gallivanting
with people from his graduating class. And more specifically, enjoying a gristle-infested
steak dinner with the girl he was flamboyantly cheating on me with.
A few nervous breaths and no alcohol later (I don’t know how
I EVER got through 21 years without alcohol, by the way…), I was confronting
him outside of the second classiest restaurant in my hometown. (I realize that
isn’t saying much, for those of you who know where I came from; I’m just trying
to put things in perspective.) Of course, he had flipped all of this nonsense
around and deemed me the crazy one but that’s kind of to be expected when you’re
dealing with a sociopath.
The irony in this story though is that some time later, when
we were discussing his habitual cheating and clarifying the accusations, he
said something to me that I will never forget. “You know, I heard somewhere
that the person you’re with on New Year’s Eve is who you’re going to spend your
entire year with.”
I shouldn’t be surprised; I knew he was in love with her and
I knew he liked to hurt my feelings. I think it was just his way of prefacing
that he was breaking up with me and then chickening out because he realized no
one else would deal with his nonsense. To be honest, probably not even the girl
he was cheating on me with. What I should have said was, “You know, the New
Year is about starting over, not insisting on sleeping around with your
ex-girlfriend who dumped you three years ago,” but I was far too ladylike for
that. Still to this day however, when people mumble that stupid New Year’s
tradition to me, no matter who they are, I mostly just want to staple things to
their head.
I have a question:
You’re crazy. –The Simpsons
But in addition to all the absolutely obvious reasons why I
just LOVE New Year’s Eve (the sparkly dresses, Jenny McCarthy hosting New Year’s
Rockin’ Eve, the sparkly shoes, endless glasses of champagne, and my husband’s
birthday), the reality is that I love the clean slate. It gives you an excuse
to look right at yourself and think about what you did right, what you did
wrong, and what needs to change.
I had big plans for my resolutions this year. I wanted to
change the world, one blog at a time. I wanted to get the body I’ve always
wanted. I wanted to stop being so goddamn negative all the time and I wanted to
work on cussing a little less. I wrote my resolutions down in black and white,
in an honest attempt to sit with them and think about how I was going to work
on accomplishing them.
New Year’s Resolutions
2016:
1.
Work harder on blogging more, writing more, and
reading more.
2.
Work out, in some form, four to five days a
week.
3.
Also, take the time to wear more accessories.
This includes your plethora of expensive heels, wedges, boots and pumps.
4.
Focus more on the positive and less on the
negative. I know that it’s hard.
5.
Stop cussing, particularly the word “fuck”, as
it ruins your aforementioned accessorized outfit and shoes when dining at
classy restaurants like Ciro’s and Grille 54.
Moral of the Crazy: Look, it’s okay if
it takes all year long to get through even one
accomplishment. That’s the beauty of being human and living in a free country.
Every morning we get the chance to wake up and begin again. There are some days
when I can confidently check off everything on that list and I feel like for
once, I’m successful at life. Then two days later, I can’t even get out of bed
without cussing, I feel like I’ve totally ruined the start to the New Year and
I’m just beating myself up over it. Sometimes I think, are you just staring at
that list? Or are you actually doing something about it?
But
every morning, I wake up with good intentions. There are times when I lose my
footing and fall off the wagon, and that’s okay. It will only push me to do
better in the future.
And
sometimes I really have to remind myself: Hey, the original me isn’t so bad. I’m
not so perfect, not so crazy, and all is fabulous.
It may not be the life you imagined but it’s
your life. You came here for a reason. Isn’t it time for you to go and begin
again? –Doug Cooper, Outside In
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