It’s that time of the year where we all talk of how awful this year was and how everything will change in the next- wait, hang on a minute, we’ve done that one already. But viewpoints change over time, so we’ll truly start as we mean to continue:
Happy New Year! To some people, the turn of the year means nothing, but for the majority it’s a time of self-reflection and prospective planning. Last year I ragged on this a little bit, saying that people shouldn’t make themselves wait for the New Year before doing this, but in retrospect, anything that causes masses of people to find it within themselves to improve their lifestyle gets a thumbs up from me.
Last year, my New Year’s Resolution was to update my blog more frequently. In all honesty, I kind of forgot about this after a few months and it seemed that this place would forever be yet another writer’s abandoned project, doomed to the depths of WordPress save for the occasional, half-hearted polish. Resolutions are resolutions, however, because they’re a necessary improvement which nags at the back of our minds, and though I didn’t remember it to be a resolution as such, I came back on the 1st September announcing weekly blog posts across both my sites. So for once, I can actually say I achieved my goals! I don’t plan on halting the updates any time soon and I thank you all for reading my ramblings. To be honest, I’ve still only just started.
Personally, 2015 was a bit of a stagnant year for me. I didn’t really do anything new besides put effort into this blog, and I’m really not that much different of a person than I was the year before. It’s not exactly been a bad year (though it’s definitely had its lows), and it’s not been something I’ve disliked living in (apart from the aforementioned lows). If you wanted to call it a calm before the storm, then it’d be an overcast, chilly kind of calm.
2016… is going to be a decisive year for me. I finish my Creative Writing degree and finally have to face the world whether I like it or not. That may sound terribly cowardly, and it probably is, but it’s something that I’m going to have to deal with. I often remark that I still feel like a child at 20; well, if that’s the case, then it’s time to grow up and face responsibility. And when it comes to me, that is so, so much easier said than done. But facts are facts. If I’m the same person at the end of the year as I am at the start of it, then I’ll be in a very tough spot.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Whenever we wonder what we’ll be like exactly one year from now, we picture somebody who has grown in bounds, conquered fear and forged success; somebody who has become confident, found someone to live their life with, stepped outside their comfort zone and made the area outside it just as cozy. I envision this every year, and if you go back and read last year’s New Year’s blog posts, you may find them laced with that anticipation. And the troubling thought that crossed my mind is that, if you showed January, 2015 Kristian what January, 2016 Kristian was like, he’d lose all motivation and hope and consider the year a write-off.
On a less… morbid… note, I have here my new New Year’s Resolution, considering how splendidly the last one turned out! (Can’t believe I’m writing that without sarcasm.) After pondering a few ideas that ranged from fortifying self-confidence to accepting responsibility to gaining independence, I decided to fence them all into one word. My New Year’s Resolution is simply this:
Actualization.
I will write my dissertation. I will finish my degree. I will find a job and I will live with it and in it. I will write fiction, and I will work on a story, and I will learn to live outside of my comfort zone even if that currently scares me in irrational volumes. I have spent twenty years of my life hanging back, for multitudes of reasons, and it’s time to stop. And just saying it won’t make it any easier, or make me any less likely to fail. But it’s time to start trying to try.
And if I make this public, then maybe it’ll just be too humiliating to allow myself to fail.
Perpetually Perturbed 