Sunrise over My Backyard, Dec 22, 2019
It's January 2nd, 2020, and my social media feed is full of my friends and acquaintances collectively reflecting upon their year, their lives over the last decade, what they've accomplished, what they hoped to accomplish that they didn't, and what they hope the coming year will bring.
I usually go through the same exercise, but in the past couple of years, I've felt less and less inclined to do so. Not because I don't feel good about my year or my decade, but because marking any particular year as The End Of The Decade and marking any one day as The Time For New Beginnings feels more and more arbitrary as time goes on.
Every day is a new beginning.
Every dawn is an opportunity to reflect on successes and failures, on things done well and things that could have been done better.
When we try to overhaul our lives all at once, we set ourselves up for failure. It's too much change to process all at once--at least, it is for me. I end up feeling like a rag doll's unworn dress, all patches and loose threads and bodiless ambition. I end up trying to match my new life to my old one, somehow, but the patterns clash and the stitches fray apart by sometime in mid-February.
So I'm not making resolutions this year. I started a behavior-tracking journal in late December; I made a big life-altering decision in mid-November; I read a book that changed my perspective about writing back in October; I am reading a book that is helping me find clarity around my social media habits right now. Change to the fabric of my life is best made, for me, one patch at a time, over a long period of time.
Life is an ongoing journey, and I will continue to show up for it. And that is the only resolution I have made.
Thanks for taking this part of the journey with me.