Every December 31, I wake up considerably early considering I'm on winter break (10:00 a.m.), and decide to change my life for the better to prepare for the new year.
Taking out my trusty, dusty, musty journal, I flip to a random page in the middle and scrawl down a million resolutions.
In the year ______, I'm going to...
Clean my room every week
Clean the study room every other week
Clean the art room every month
STOP PROCRASTINATING
Be nicer to random people
Be more outgoing
Have a better temper
Dedicate two hours every Sunday to organizing my week
Drink four bottles of water every day
Go to bed by 11:00 every school night
Go to bed by 12:00 every weekend
Wake up before 9:00 every weekend
Get my nails done every other month
Stretch everyday
Take a walk every day
Learn Japanese
Learn origami
Finish a book every week
Write calligraphy every week
Pick up piano again
Bike every day
Do this
Do that
Do EVERYTHING
It usually works for a little bit, roughly half a month. Then, one by one, my "amazing habits" become abandoned. This year, I saw a video on how before we write what we are going to do the next year, we should first analyze the previous year, the good and the bad. I tried that, but found that analyzing the WHOLE year was quite complicated. My list for the good and the bad would be longer than my resolution list, and that's saying something. So, to simplify and verbally Marie Kondo things, I gave myself fifteen minutes to have verbal diarrhea about this year and then organized 2023 by writing 3 main good habits and 3 main bad habits.
This year, a lot happened. We started off kicking off the speech and debate season, of course, when I decided to try a new event. I didn't expect to do anything but O.O. in the beginning of the school year. Then there was the student council election. I was hesitant to run myself, so I just helped others out. It was a fun experience and I'm excited for it next year. The next few months were basically filler months, like those TV episodes where nothing really important happens. They just exist to fill in time. Summer came. Potato and I hosted an art camp. I was so sick that I could barely talk and breathe. I had to wear a mask. It's hard enough to handle little kids with all your energy, so I was beaten up. Luckily, Potato pulled through. But the kids... THE KIDS! They just kept coming and coming it was pure chaos. It was lucrative and I look forward to hosting it again next year with Potato, but we are definitely having a restriction on the number of kids and no more walk-ins. Then.... I went to speech and debate nationals, then went home for one day. Then chaos happened again. I went to a summer camp with Gravy for two weeks, then to another camp by myself for two weeks, then to New York, Washington DC, California, and I know I'm forgetting somewhere. Then home. Then school started. School this year has been one of those filler episodes again. Then December came and my brother got in his dream school..... and here we are.
Okay, my three bad habits of 2023 were: procrastination, disorganization, and a bad sleep schedule.
But, I do have to give myself credit of being open-minded, making lots of new friends, and taking risks.
So, after I ranted that all out, I made a list of three resolutions for the New Year: one to help my health, one to help my mind, and one to help my connections. My real resolutions (not the list blab above) are like birthday wishes to me. Or socks. They're very private things.
I think it's so funny at times that I always wait until New Year's to become a new me. I suppose it's the idea that I have a blank slate: my grades are new again, I get a new shot, and everything can be left in 2023. But sometimes, waiting a whole year or even months can feel like too long to improve myself. When I'm desperate and am a pile of very unorganized chaos, I wait till the end of the month and then organize myself again. But oftentimes by then, I've already fallen into an oozy slump.
On December 30, as I was doing my yearly frantic clean (you know, the one where you blast ABBA and go crazy mopping your room, rearranging furniture, and finding random crumpled homework assignments beneath your bed), I found an old, dusty motivational wooden block. None of my parents or anyone in my family likes motivational posters or sayings, so it must have been given to us by a friend. I think I can guess who. It said, "Today is a good day to have a good day".
Usually, I hate cheesy, cliche things. It just feels sappy, but this time I cleaned off that block and placed it in my room right in front of my bed, so it's the first thing I see when I wake up. There's a sweet ring to the quote. It's something I want to remember for the rest of 2024 and the years to come. I don't have to wait till the end of the week, the end of the month, or the end of a year to get my life together. It can be March 13, May 27, June 9, or November 3 when I decide to reorganize my room, deep-clean everything, reflect, and refocus myself. January 1st doesn't deserve all that attention.
So, as I begin reorganizing my school life today, on January 6th, not January 1st, I wish you all good luck on your everyday epiphanies, reinventions, and discoveries! :)
Cheers,
emma