New Beginnings
A month and a half in, what do we think?
By Mia Timlin
I’ve never been crazy about the New Year. I’ve spent years setting up and failing to fulfill resolutions, years celebrating the New Year without the thought of resolutions crossing my mind and a year during a third grade rebellious streak actively not making resolutions because I refused to let some random day determine my life. As little effort as I’ve put into New Year’s resolutions throughout my life, it’s impossible to ignore the certain weight that comes from the reset that a new year brings. The mental kickback of going to write the date and realizing you should’ve put a 23 where the 22 used to go. The feeling that 2016 can’t have been that long ago, can it? and realizing that indeed, it is.
As life shifts in the tiniest ways when a new year rolls in, there’s a scramble and a determination and a wave of relief because it’s yet another year and maybe it’ll be terrible, but it also just might be everything you’ve been waiting for. Now the New Year is past, but for me and a lot of college students, it feels like the new year has really just started with the beginning of the second semester.
When it comes to new starts, I have a tendency to believe that small things in my life have the potential to change without me actually doing anything. This often results in long mental lists that I plan on sometime checking off but have no actual plan of when I’ll get around to doing so. I trick myself into thinking that maybe if I just pull it up and turn it around in my head enough times, it’ll just happen. I write down a mental sticky note to do it tomorrow, or the day after. This is never truer than at the beginning of a new semester.
I’ve just spent several long weeks back at home with nothing incredibly pressing to do except bingeing the “Friends” reruns that play daily, and now getting back into the swing of actually doing things is tricky. I can feel my mind begin to drift away during parts of the day, and the alarm bell that brings me back, reminding me that it’s time to go to work, or class. I’ve pushed off doing economics homework problems, composition writing exercises and even this article until the very last second, because part of my brain still hasn’t accepted this new beginning it’s been thrust into.
While I may not have always been crazy about New Year’s resolutions, the holiday itself is something I put a certain amount of weight on, whether I like it or not. It’s a giant beginning for me and for the people around me. I’ve always been a little obsessed with the way time moves, and experiencing things as they happen. It’s why I have a weird need to watch “Saturday Night Live” each week actually live, and refuse to pause or rewind. It’s why I write myself a letter each year on my birthday on the minute, and throw small celebrations for the most random of anniversaries that pop up. I need these landmarks in my mind to measure time by — something to make a specific moment feel special. I think that’s part of why the New Year is such a big deal for a lot of people — it makes what would just be some random, nothing day in January feel special, and that gives us hope for the rest of those random, nothing days ahead.
I think humans are hardwired to hope, even if we don’t always admit it. It’s those thoughts that cloud the brain right before going to scratch off a lottery ticket — maybe this will be the time — no matter how many tickets have failed to earn back even what was spent in the first place. It’s the antsy need to pick up your cards and look at them before the dealing has ended, because this has got to be the royal flush you’ve been waiting for. Call it luck, or karma, or circumstance, or hope. We want to believe that we are meant for good things that will find us eventually.
