New Year, New Me?

    So, just in case anyone lives in a cave and might have missed the news… it’s 2014! This makes me feel alarmingly old, as I’m turning 20 this year. Twenty?! I can only call myself a teenager for a few more months. Twenty sounds like such a grown-up age, like I should be mature and responsible about my life. However, that certainly won’t be happening. I’m pretty certain I’m going to be a twenty-year-old who still acts like she’s five, as I do now. But hey, that’s still a few more months away, and let’s face it, twenty isn’t old at all in terms of an entire lifespan.

     Anyway, my social networking feeds have been covered in people reflecting on the last year and making resolutions for the new one. And to be perfectly honest, I’m sick of hearing it all. People claim that they are going to change their lives and become a whole new person, just because it’s a new year. It’s only a date though. Our calendar just happens to be constructed this way. Today could just be any other Wednesday, but because it’s January 1st, it becomes significant somehow. New Year’s Resolutions irk me, as if you really want to change something about your life, you can do that at any time of year, and people so often fail at keeping these resolutions for very long.

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     However, in some ways I do think New Year is a good thing. People often just plod through life, doing the same thing day in, day out, but at New Year we get a wake-up call, reminding us that life is passing us by. Reflection and new resolutions are a sign that there is something about our lives we want to change, and if this particular date in the year prompts us to do just that, it is certainly not a bad thing. I think my main issue surrounding resolutions are the people who make them half-heartedly because it’s the thing to do, then never stick to them. Or they screw up once and so give up entirely, when they could resume their efforts of they really wanted to. If you want to make changes in your life, and are going to put in the effort to do so, then by all means, go for it. I do think people should make these changes as soon as possible, rather than just at New Year, but for many the thought of another year having passed by may be what spurs them into action.
    Personally, I haven’t made any resolutions for years, as I so rarely keep them for more than a few weeks. However, over the past month or two, I have been thinking about making some changes, but was too lazy to actually do anything about them. So for me, Christmas was a time to continue being lazy (er, I mean relax) and then use New Year as a point of time to force myself into action. I’ve also set myself specific goals, rather than vague notions of self-improvement, so I can keep track of whether I’m actually achieving anything.