Happy You Year!

I had a plan.  I was going to spend January 1-3 getting the house cleaned up and getting ready to jump back into my pre-Christmas routine on January 4.  You know, new year, new (clean) slate and all that.  Then something happened in the morning on January 3 and I was distracted and scattered all day.  I did clean some things up, but not the things I had planned, and not really the things you could see that would make the house feel like it was a shiny new year.

Then there were some previously scheduled things that week that would have messed with my routine anyway.  So here I was, the first week of the year, definitely not back into my routine, and my house did not look like a shiny new year.  I needed some joy.  I needed some order.  As I wrote down what was bothering me, I decided this could be a Heather New Year.  There is Ukrainian Christmas and New Year, Lunar New Year… so why couldn’t this be Heather New Year?  Why couldn’t I start my shiny new year a little later this year?

New Year’s is really interesting.  In most cases, the unknown is scary.  The new year is completely unknown, and yet it isn’t usually scary.  It is hopeful.  Hope that we will get our dream job, hope that someone we love will get better, hope that we will keep that new year’s resolution this year and become the better version of ourselves that we want to be.

It is hopeful, but I think there is also a lot of pressure.  At a time when you may just be tired from all the holiday gatherings, there may be pressure to have a fabulous New Year’s Eve celebration, there may be family pressure to host or attend New Year’s dinner, and then there is the pressure to make and keep New Year’s resolutions.  It is everywhere – TV ads, online ads, social media…  – everywhere we see things telling us to become a better version of ourselves.  New Year, New You! Lose weight!  Eat better!  Exercise more!  Depending on our circumstances, losing weight, eating better, and exercising more may be good for us.  But so much of it is simply trying to sell us something.  I don’t remember seeing any of those ads offering help for free.  So after a season of maybe putting pressure on ourselves to buy just the right gift, have the perfect holiday celebration, spend time with people we may find challenging…  we have this additional pressure telling us we just aren’t good enough the way we are.

Then maybe we take all of that in and decide that they are right.  I need to lose weight!  I need to eat better!  I need to exercise more! And maybe we do.  So we make New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, eat better, and exercise more.  But are we really doing ourselves a favour?  I don’t love the idea of New Year’s resolutions.   To me, they come with pressure to do these things perfectly and I’m just setting myself up to fail.  That could just be me, but I prefer the idea of goals.  I couldn’t quite put my finger on how they were different, so I looked up the definitions:

Resolution: A firm decision to do or not to do something

Goal: The object of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result

That makes sense to me, and I think explains why we so often don’t keep our New Year’s resolutions.  If we decide that we are going to lose weight but then we keep eating the leftover Christmas baking – I don’t know about you, but even after sharing it we usually have some in the freezer for several months after Christmas – we feel like we have failed and we stop trying.  But a goal is more long term.  We can – and should – break it down into steps to make it doable for ourselves.

So back to Heather New Year.  I decided it was okay.  I would do what I needed to do that week and take the following weekend and get things cleaned up so it would feel like a shiny new year.  And I did.  Did I jump back into my routine?  Not exactly.  But I’m working on it.  And of course, the shiny house doesn’t stay as shiny as I would like it to.  But I’m working on it.  The point is to work on it, not to worry that it’s done perfectly. Life is a journey, and I am a work in progress.  I may never be exactly that best version of me – the me that I think I should be, not that the ads all tell me I have to be.  But I’m working on it.

So let’s all do the best we can, and I wish you all…

Happy YOU Year!