- Brynn
Blogmas Day 8: The new years resolution i've managed to keep
If there’s one thing I’ve become pretty passionate about it’s the idea that you should only set one big new year's resolution.
I think that giving yourself a huge list of resolutions is just too overwhelming. If the classic “list of new year’s resolutions” is known for being so short lived, then why do we year after year try to do them?
A couple years ago I decided to stop making myself a list. As I knew I wouldn’t be able to wake up and just be able to embody all these things that I had resolved to do. Whether it was spend more time doing something, eating more (or less) of something, or anything else. How does a list on paper and a single night give us the ability to do that? That’s why I make a single resolution.
My resolution for this year has been to just lean into it. It’s something that I came up with last year around the end of the semester as I was approaching the holidays. It had been a year of doing so many things I hadn’t really enjoyed. I was playing a sport in which the coach made the experience pretty horrible. I was working hard on classes I wasn’t the least bit passionate about. I really felt that worst of all I had become disconnected from what I loved to do and pulled so far into something else.
So, I decided to just lean into what I wanted to do.
When January hit I woke up in the morning with a (slightly) ambiguous resolution that has changed my entire year!
I started by leaning in with my style. I stopped caring that all the girls at my school pretty much wore no makeup and just piled up heaps of mascara until they had complete spider lashes. I put a stop to my personal spider-lashing and just started to wear what I wanted and go with any kind of cooky look I felt. I haven’t really returned to tight jeans since and have been living pretty exclusively in high rise mom jeans that just give you *comfort* that no tight jeans could give. I remember one day specifically in which I came to school with a much more burgundy eye look then I would have usually done. I remember one girl in a biology review session saying “your eyes look so pretty with that pink eyeshadow” and it felt good. She may not have really gotten it but I know I did and I’ve been happier for it. When you make a resolution to just do what feels right, the small things that stopped you before fall away.
I know that having a rather open ended resolution may not be for everybody. I have found that for me, it helps make it clear what I really want to achieve. Whatever I feel like I want to do, I just lean into it. I found that in college while everybody was working on a creation of a formal reputation I didn’t have as much stress about it. I *of course* was still stressed but I hadn’t spent the last half year leaning into myself in high school to not do the same in college. I’ve accepted that I’m rather grandma ish. I LOVE to go to bed early and while that’s not part of the oh so glamorous college lifestyle, I still do it and LOVE it. I know that I’m not just your typical jane with what I like to do and how I like to do it. BUT. I’m glad that I haven’t spent my days typical Jane-ing away and instead did what I wanted. One example I have is that in my experience in college I lived in close proximity to someone who wasn’t leaning in. I could see that they were trying so hard to achieve the late night life when they just couldn’t. They had become so exclusively focused on being someone who was living this extreme nocturnal lifestyle that they were struggling during the day. I could tell they wanted me to admire it. To applaud them for creating a rambunctious and dazed life. I also know that a lot of people would have. I wasn’t leaning in to do that, and I wasn’t going to applaud them when they were so far from leaning in to what they actually wanted.
While these things are only rambles on my resolution I think what I really want to say is that a resolution is only a couple of words strung together. It’s really about what you do when you wake up on january first. Through the whole year you want to keep this goal up and you don’t even know what’s going to happen. You could meet the love of your life, publish a book of exclusively monkey based poems, or become completely addicted to spicy chai. THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS. So why create a resolution that goings to box up the possibilities of your year?
I know this has been a ramble. A random and passionate one at that.
I’m just happy with my resolution and I’m actually quite excited for next years!
Have you guys been thinking about new year's resolutions yet? Any ones from last year that you have achieved?
