New Year, New Me

It’s that time of year again. You know the time. It’s where we all collectively decided to make our lives desperately worse by giving ourselves ultimatums we have no hope of reaching, then, because we like pain, I guess, we decide to get ONLINE, and TELL people what we are going to do during the year.

That’s right folks, its New Years resolution time!

According to my quick google search, the practice of New Year’s Resolutions goes all the back to the Babylonians, over four thousand years ago.

Now, this is way too low stakes for me to dig too deeply into, so I am going to trust the History Channel on this. They wouldn’t lie to me.

The fact remains, every year we make a list of demands with ourselves. We tell ourselves, “These are the rules for this year, kid, I made them up, deal.” And the optimistic part of your brain tells you that all of your dreams will come true, and that all of it will get done.

The realistic side of your brain though? All they see is a long list of things that may or may get done, and it knows beyond a shadow of doubt that when missing a few of them eventually happens, its the one that will have to deal with the fall out of the rest of you feeling like a failure.

Now, don’t get me wrong, having goals in great, and important, we should all have a solid plan to change and grow.

What we should NOT do is shackle ourselves to a completely made up, and let’s be honest, arbitrary, set of things we made up on a whim two bottles of Pinot Noir deep at midnight on a freaking Tuesday. Sham day.

You can’t simultaneously believe in not trusting your brain after nine PM, and be ready to rigidly hold a to a fake list of things that are magically going to fix all of your problems.

Nothing short of magic or million dollars can do that. You think your haphazardly sketched out one year plan is going to change anything?

Spoilers: It’s not.

In fact, 9/10 times, a number I just completely made up, it is going to make your day, week, month, year worse. You are going to torture yourself by following that x% of the year bot, and start panicking that you aren’t even close to doing any of your resolutions.

You will eventually simply spiral out of control, and give up on everything and fall back into old bad habits. Which might come as a shock to you, not the intended affect you set out for.

What makes it worse is you make this big list of things, then you get online and talk about it.

You proudly proclaim you are going to create the Torment Nexus, from the hit book: Don’t Create the Torment Nexus. Then the end of the year rolls around and I am at your front door at four AM asking when the contraption is finally coming out.

Now, look, don’t get me wrong, I know I sound like I have an axe grind, and I do, but not with people who make New Year’s resolution.

Like I said, I think having a list of goals is good, and something we should all do. With that being said, like everything else in this world, resolutions have become gamified in the worst possible ways.

The ghost should have been up the moment corporations got in on it, trying to sell you gym memberships, and cars for some reason.

More than that, the New Year’s resolution is too all or nothing. The way the entire idea is taught is completely flawed in a way that derails the positive aspects of trying to make a change.

Too often, you are made to feel like a failure, or an embarrassment, either to yourself, or others, because your resolutions fell through.

Time isn’t promised to anyone, and anything can happen, at any time. Why on earth should you be a failure because things completely out of your control changed and mutated aspects of your plans.

Thriving for growth is good. Recognizing that there are things about yourself that you don’t like, and attempting to change them is wonderful. But putting all that on yourself at the start of the year is recipe for disaster.

Change is a process. You aren’t bread. You aren’t going to morph into an amorphous blob in the middle of the night, as cool as that sounds. You’re a person, with outside pressures, and dozens of things that need your constant attention.

Is it entirely surprising, then, that you rarely meet your goals, or if you DO meet them, you’ve manage to destroy every nerve in your wrist. For what reason did you do that to yourself other than stubborn determination. Now a new year is rolling around and you’re talking about how much you regret going as hard as you did on things you wanted to change because, surprise! Candles burn out a lot faster when they are burning on both ends.

You don’t need to do that to yourself. You never did.

The new year is an arbitrary time to attempt any sort of meaningful change, anyway.

Want to do something? Do it. Literally, just stop reading this and putting it off and just go do it. Don’t worry, it’ll still be here when you get back.

You don’t have to give yourself a deadline to get things done. That puts way too much pressure on you, for something that is otherwise low on the priority list.

Want to write more? Well you’re already on the Machine That Gives You Brain Damage. Worried that you aren’t drawing enough? That’s okay. Art is hard, and fighting the art and your brain is a bad combination. Want to play more games? Dust off the old Switch and give something you put down years ago another try. You may find that you actually quiet enjoy it.

Is it entirely possible that we simply aren’t built for ultimatums? That hard cut offs changes our brain chemistry in a way that is actually detrimental to our lives?

Look, I am not saying you shouldn’t make New Year’s resolutions. I’ve spent a lot of time being a New Year’s resolution hater, but I am not saying you shouldn’t try to be better.

What I AM saying is to be kinder to yourself.

I am saying that, any of your goals, can be started, at any time during the year, not just first few months/weeks where it’s exciting to have things down on paper. You have the means to do something? Do it. Don’t tell anyone. Just start. So if it falls through, you don’t feel like you’re ALSO letting other people down, and not just yourself.

Not making your goals doesn’t make you a failure, though. It is alright, I promise. Don’t wallow in defeat. Examine what happened instead. Take a look at what went wrong, and more importantly, what went right.

Because despite what your brain may be telling you, you did alright, all things considered. Everything sucks all the time, and frankly, it’s amazing we all still function while also being bombarded by the Worst News Possible every single day of the week.

If you do have a New Year’s resolution this year, I humbly ask that it includes simply being.

Allow yourself to be. To exist in a world that ask far too much of you. Live. Do the things you want to do. Not simply everything a list tells you to do. Not things you feel like you should be doing. Things you actually want to do that brings you joy. And if that’s doing absolutely nothing? That’s between you and god and no one else.

Even the act of doing nothing can be freeing.

You owe nothing to this world, especially not your kindness and patience. Save those things for people that deserve it. Including yourself. You’ve given enough already. Don’t let them take more.

Happy New Year. I hope all of your dreams come true. And if not, I hope you manage to live a life that brings yourself some measure of joy.