Cheers to 2024!

A not-so-cheery welcoming of the year

As we step into the new year, you will see two types of people on social media and even perhaps in your interactions with colleagues and friends- those who view it as a fresh start and those who are already over it. It is taking all my willpower to turn myself from the latter to the former.

At the beginning of anything really, there is always a sense of abundance, the universe is flowing through you, and the unwritten pages are begging for adventures. But we have been burned too often by false hopes and glittery 2020 Olympics logos that were too good to be true (yes, I am still salty about that). This generation of 30-somethings are exhausted, worn out, and seeking the adrenaline that will help them power through their back aches enough to complete a 5-day trip to Italy only to mentally check out again. But, I digress.

At the end of December last year, I had racing thoughts about how I could make the most of this year…should I sign up for a marathon? Or perhaps finally open my Etsy shop! Sign up for salsa dancing classes…you get the gist. And sure enough, January 1st came about only to find me in bed at 9 am and eating a breakfast of doughnuts and leftover wasabi peas. Over the past few days, I have had lots of constructive ideas about improving the quality of my life, only to catch myself falling short- ah no, it’s already the 2nd…now it’s not gonna be meaningful anymore. Might as well finish the leftover cupcakes…

Umm yeah right…like some random numbers on a calendar are going to determine whether or not I am going to have a good year! We humans (or at least most of us) have these arbitrary signifiers of failure- that if by January 3rd I break my resolution of being on a diet, I might as well eat junk food for the remaining 28 days…If I haven’t made art in the first ten days of the month, might as well start afresh in February. Please don’t! And here, I am not just talking to you, but also training my own brain to get out of this echo chamber of negativity.

So this year, one of my only resolutions is to try. Try my best and my hardest, and some days maybe not at all. To fall twice and get up thrice. To show up and keep showing up. To fill a blank sketchbook page with random squiggles, but not let it escape unwritten. Better done than perfect, as they say.

Because four days may be gone, but there are still 362 left.