Amidst the fanfare of New Year’s celebrations, I can easily forget that things are going to continue as they are once the festivities are over. Just because the calendar changes doesn’t mean that anything else will change. My present habits, routines, and systems are going to keep going unless I intentionally change them. That’s both a blessing and a curse. I like that my progress won’t vanish when the clock strikes midnight but it would be nice if the difficult stuff went away at the end of the year.
Since New Year’s isn’t an automatic hard reset, I get to decide how I want to start off the new year. The last few years have all ended very differently for me. Although 2017 was overall a very difficult year, it ended on an incredibly high note and gave me a great start to 2018. In contrast, 2018 was one of the best years of my life but I was in a difficult place emotionally by the time it left. This year has been a mixed bag but I’m feeling good about both the present and the future at this point. So to make 2020 a good year, all I have to do is keep my positive momentum from this year going and continue to work on myself.
It’s helped that I’ve kept my New Year’s celebrations small and quiet. Until 2017, I had never even gone out; I had just stayed home and relaxed until midnight, at which point I’d go to bed. I’ve hung out with a few friends the past two years and I’m thinking of going out again tonight, although I haven’t decided for sure yet. If I do go out, it will be for another simple celebration to say farewell to the old year, ring in the new year, and then get some sleep. I don’t have any wild or crazy New Year’s stories and that’s how I like it.
That’s my take on New Year’s. While many people see it as out with the old and in with the new, I see it as out with the unwanted and in with the wanted. Like carving a sculpture out of marble, it’s a matter of deciding what to eliminate and what to enhance. I’ve gotten pretty good at that and it’s put me in an overall great life situation. While I have plans for next year and an idea of how things will go, I’ll no doubt be surprised many times along the way and will probably end up getting what I need even if it’s not what I wanted. That all being said, I hope you have a wonderful New Year’s celebration that gets 2020 started off on the right foot and takes you one step closer to your best life.