So This Is the New Year
Death Cab for Cutie sings, “So this is the new year, and I don’t feel any different.” It’s an arbitrary date, one that doesn’t mean much unless you want it to. And God, I want it to. I want to be different, always, longing for transformation into something other, greater than what I have been. I make grand pronouncements and come up with elaborate plans for how I’ll get to where I want to be, and do they ever come to fruition? No. In this way I’m just like everyone else who pledges to lose weight, eat healthier, exercise more, read books, do anything they can think of to better the self.
This year, I don’t want to make resolutions based in denial. Denial of myself or denial of the things that bring me pleasure and joy. This year, I want to be more, but not because I have so far been less. I want to be more because I deserve more. I want to be more because I carry within myself the capacity for everything I’ve ever longed for, and I’m tired of waiting patiently for the universe to deliver to me. I’m tired of manifesting and praying and hoping someone or something else will drop the things into my lap that I want. I’m ready to make things happen.
The common wisdom surrounding the desire for romance is to become the person you want to attract. Build a life you’re happy and fulfilled in, do all the things you want to do with a romantic partner, and love will come. Maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t, but what is true is that I know who I want and I know who I want to be. Her hair is a little wild and her cheeks are flushed because she’s consuming life in greedy gulps. She speaks with kindness when she can and with grace even when she can’t, and she tends to her heart and her mind with the same tenderness she gives to her garden, and she’s steady in all the ways that matter because she feels a deep and unshakable trust in herself and her ability to pilot her own life.
She bakes and she sings and she writes, and she reads tarot and she roller skates and she plays guitar, and she knits and she reads and she is always surrounded by the sound and sparkle of someone who is intentional about cultivating a space where she feels safe and warm and free. She’s always a little overdressed for the occasion and she always has a present for the friend she’s meeting, a small something that says I thought of you, here is my hand and here is something to tell you I love you. She is the physical and spiritual embodiment of cozy.
Is she a little bit of a manic pixie dream girl? Maybe so. Probably so. But she belongs to herself before she belongs to anyone else, and if she is me, then what of it? What if I want to enchant my own world, to blow through my life like a gauzy fairy whirlwind and shake things up and teach myself the life lessons I have yet to learn? What if I want to be my own manic pixie dream girl, to fall extravagantly in love with myself and give myself a year to build and grow on? What if I want to be the obnoxiously twee folk song girl who makes me swoon?
Beginning is always the hardest part. I meant to write this on New Year’s Eve, and then New Year’s Day, and now look. The year has already begun. It’s been whispering in my ear for weeks to remind me of what I lack, what I can offer to myself. I’m keeping it vague because I don’t want to lock myself too tightly into a particular thing as a resolution. The point is wild. The point is free. The point is room to bloom. The point is the adventure and the discovery and the cultivating of whatever presents itself along the way. The point is just do something, anything, however small, just commit to a single action that will propel me forward into 2024.
The point is no longer being scared and hesitant and uncertain and questioning, no longer undermining what I know lives inside me because I’m too afraid of failure to even try. The point is I’ve got me and I know I’ll be okay, so it’s time to take bold, messy risks and throw things out to see what lands.
So this is the new year, and I’m ready to take it by storm.