It’s a new year. A new beginning. This year will be different. Not like last year when her resolution would be different. No, this year is different. For real. It has to be. Surely, focusing all her mental wishes and hopes to being bold and really going after it will make her life better. Yes, going after it. Life.
Ugh, but who is she kidding? She’s been lying to herself year after year, making these grand New Year’s resolutions only to give up before she even starts. What’s the point? Screw the resolutions! Why do people have to wait for the ball to drop in a city they’ve never been to be the person they want to be? Goals and dreams change year-round. A new year, a new month, a new week, a new day. It’s all the same. It is convenient to have a moment of crossing that start line. But why? Why do people wait for a new calendar to change?
This year will be different. The new year isn’t the beginning. It’s a continuation of a slow change she’s been experiencing. This year won’t be different because of a resolution bandwagon. All the motivational and the self-proclaimed authentic people with their messy hair have impossible standards. It’s all a mask they put on to tell her that “she can do it too!” The digital world is not the real world, it’s a screen. Unfortunately, those motivational speeches don’t work if she’s glued to her phone. The last several months she’s learned to leave her phone somewhere else instead of carrying it in her pocket from room to room in case it dings with spam. Even spam is exciting when you’re addicted to your phone. Her time away from her phone has given her freedom she’s forgotten about since college when she only had a simple phone with no added apps. This led her to a revelation. There will be no big resolution this year. Just the same passions she’s been slowly after for a while.
That’s the thing about New Year’s resolutions. People tend to think about them at the end of the year. They find the trendy thing to do to reach a happier life. Lose weight because they splurged during the holidays. Be a nicer person. Typically, these types of people fail over and over because they are not truly in it. They don’t actually want to go through the process to reach their resolution. Mental health has become trendy, maybe meditation is a big resolution. It’s hard. People pick hard things to do and give up because they thought it was cool because they saw it on the internet. It’s possible, sure, but is it something you want to do? Will you get the burnout most people do because you don’t know what discipline and effort is?
She’s been that person and she’s tired of it. Tired of pretending like weight loss is a resolution she believes in. This year she finally got it through her head that maybe a resolution is overrated and putting the continued effort into her passions will pay off. Her goals have been developing slowly and she’s b