I’m Done With New Year’s Resolutions

Now that the music has been turned down, the confetti has been swept up, and the hangovers have begun to ease, it is time for my personal least favorite Holiday tradition; New Year’s Resolutions. The pressure to radically transform your life each year is nearly impossible to escape. Social media is flooded with Ads, inspiration, and vows to keep each other accountable on our resolutions. Family and friends are all sharing their resolutions with each other and just about everywhere you turn in public there is a sign promoting the concept of “new year, new me.”

I am not saying there is anything wrong with New Year’s resolutions in general. But for me, they don’t work. I take them so seriously that any slight diversion from my strict goal leads to me feeling ashamed. The shame spirals me into a dark place of self-loathing. And I pretty much end up doing the exact opposite of what my goal was which perpetuates the mental warfare inside my head. With that being said though- I am still excited, motivated, and determined for 2019. It just looks a little different in my world.

2019 is going to be a good year.

Not because of a resolution that I’ll fail at and then be overcome with guilt and shame over. And not because of “new year, new me.”

No. 2019 will be a good year because every year is good. Not every year is my favorite. Not every year is fun, or painless. This year will be good because every year I become even more myself. Each year I grow and bloom despite the amount of rain that pours on the amount of sunshine that beams.

Resolutions, circumstances, goals, and achievement do not make a year “good.” Because what is good to one is not the same as what is good to another. Measurement of “good” is all relative to the measurer and the tool in which they use to do the measuring.

This year, I choose not to measure at all. Because no matter the variables involved in my measuring, it somehow ends up always reading “not good enough” no matter which way I try to spin it. And even when I get so close. Even when my worth reads off at “almost good enough” I still never seem to feel whole, fulfilled, or enough.

Probably because in an attempt to measure up (or down if we are talking about waist size) I end up losing myself entirely. And I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of having to go looking for a version of myself that is merely a shell and finding her in a dark corner somewhere. And when I ask her how she got there I find out it is because somewhere along the lines she got the message that she, as the version she currently was, was not worthy of the light.

Well, screw that mentality. I can continue getting stronger, wiser, and happier AND live my life in the sunshine. No matter who I was in 2018, who I am today, or who I’ll be this time next year;

I belong in the light.

2019 is going to be good. Not because Pinterest, Facebook, or Aunt Betty said it had to be. It is going to be good because I am good. Because this world still has so much good to offer. And because I no longer accept the pressure that says I am or ever was “less than.”

Cheers to 2019.

New year, same me; becoming who I am and who I want to be, exactly on time, whenever that may be.