AI: New Year’s Resolutions
By Call me weird, but I find starting a brand new year more exciting than Christmas – I love how it’s a time that seems tailor-made to helping you not let things that have happened in the past year completely overshadow the next one. The problem with this is my tendency to make so many ridiculous resolutions that I end up failing before February even starts. This time last year I decided on two goals for 2012: one, to read a book a week (I managed one every other week); and two, to look after myself and my own interests. This probably reads as a very selfish resolution to make, but I’d just come out of an intense period of being treated quite badly by someone and had to essentially relearn how healthy interactions worked and how not to do things in an effort to make unkind people happy (vague sentence is vague, I know). Thankfully this went a bit better than number one!
This year I’ll be taking the book-a-week challenge again, but I also want to start forming some good (sustainable and definable) habits, like writing every day and getting fit, though these things I’ve already started doing rather than waiting until next week for the sake of it. I think it would be really interesting to find out how everyone in the Queereka community approaches this time of year – to what degree everyone buys into the “new beginnings! clean slate!” idea, what sort of things people prioritise and whether making resolutions should really be a once-a-year thing.
Do you make new year’s resolutions? If so, what are yours for 2013, and how well did you do at 2012’s resolutions? If you don’t, why not? How do you feel about the whole concept of making plans for a new year?
The Afternoon Inqueery (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Queereka community. Look for it to appear on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays at 3pm ET.
(Featured image by bayasaa on Flickr.)
I don’t usually make resolutions, per se, but I tend to look back over the year and consider the changes in perspective made over that time period. There are always plenty of those to think about. I like the concept of resolutions if it works for people; usually changes I need to make are harder to pin down into absolutes, but just having the reminder to reflect on how the last twelve months went is really useful, I think.
Last New Year, though, I did make a resolution – to take care of myself and my own interests, much as you described. It was something I needed, and it’s given me the basis for much healthier interactions since then, both platonic and otherwise. (It’s hard to hold everyone else up when you’re falling apart at the seams, yourself!)