New Year's Resolutions

I love New Year’s Eve. I am obsessed with resolutions. As a child, I’d open my mother’s computer and use her Microsoft to assemble what I’d call my “Resolution Workbook.” The first few pages would include a list of my goals. The following pages would be a detailed breakdown of how I’d achieve those goals, and then the last pages would be inspirational Google images.

I was creating a vision board before there was even a word for it. Then, in June, around the time of my half-birthday–which, yes, I did celebrate–I’d check back in with my workbook, keeping track of my progress, creating new milestones, and eliminating goals I no longer aligned with.

I was a high-strung kid. I was convinced I had little time to reach for the things I wanted. I couldn’t imagine what life would look like at 16, let alone at 26.

I was meant to be born on December 31st, actually. But my mother had me induced eleven days early. She was worried all the computers would shut down on Y2K. So, instead, I was born on December 20th, and strangely, it makes me feel deeply linked to the turning of our calendar.

The shift between December 31st and January 1st is one I treat with great respect. Even though I know the only difference is a day, I treat it as a new era, since I myself have just turned a new age.

Not to mention, I work in fitness, so January 1 is sort of our biggest day of the year. I’ll say wholeheartedly, the way corporate gyms and studios are predatory, and there’s no need for you to sign up on New Year’s Day. Your resolutions are malleable, and movement should feel like a gift, not punishment! Ok–tangent over.

That being said, I try to celebrate the 31st with the grandiosity I think it deserves.

A few years ago, I signed up for a New Year’s meditation workshop. It started at 10:00 at a yoga studio in the village. We sat in a silent, guided meditation for two hours. We were meant to be reflecting on what we were leaving behind in 2022 and hoping to gain in 2023. As the clock struck, we were gently lifted out of our meditative state. There was a “sober soirée” immediately following, featuring vision board supplies, but I hopped into an Uber to meet a few friends at a bar in Bushwick instead. It’s all about balance.

I spent last year’s New Year’s Eve with my mother in Williamsburg, VA. I’d received party invitations, but the trains back on January 1st were far cheaper than the trains on December 31st, and besides, I love spending time with my mom. She works at William & Mary, and the school has a New Year’s tradition called the Yule Log. Students write what they’re grateful for on a piece of paper and tie it to a piece of holly, and then throw it into the fire.

We tied our gratitudes onto our strands of holly, but the crowd crush towards the fire was so intense, we bowed out. We stood in line for the free hot chocolate and took ourselves home. We went out dancing at the town’s sole bar. I highly recommend going out dancing with your mother. When we got home, we threw our holly into our gas fireplace, and the flames licked blue for a second.

This year, my friends and I are doing twelve wishes. We discussed it over dinner. On the Winter Solstice, you write twelve wishes you have for the next year, and over the last 11 days before the new year, you burn each wish one by one, till you’re left with a final resolution you are responsible for. The other eleven, if they’re fated, will come to you.

I’ve been lighting mine on fire above a woodwick candle I won in a gift exchange, and then dropping the ashes into a ceramic mug that once held coffee that sits on my writing desk like a paperweight.

As I light the resolutions, I think about fire’s cleansing power, about the winter solstice, and how it’s the darkest day of the year. How so many winter celebrations center around the miracle of light. I wonder what my Catholic grandmother would think about her granddaughter performing manifestations and lighting notebook paper on fire.

On the 31st, I’ll learn what resolution I’m responsible for. But in the meantime, I’m pinning things to a 2026 Vision Board. I might make it my phone screen. But the way the last few years have gone, I’m learning that what is meant for you, truly will come to you. There’s no telling what life has in store, and very few things are within our control.

I’m not hunching over a resolution workbook. I’m trying not to pin all my hopes on 2026, because life is not made in a single year.

But if you’re able to celebrate the New Year with the people you love, with a cup of kindness, and old acquaintance forgot, you might cherish the auld lang syne.

Make the New Year merry and bright.