New Year, New You?

Over the holiday break, especially as December 31st approached, I kept encountering this phrase: "New Year, New Me!" I saw it all over social media and heard it from my nieces and nephews and, most hilariously and unexpectedly, from my non-social-media-following dad.

Back when I used to set resolutions, I would write massive lists of all the things I wanted to make better in my life, along with elaborate systems and plans to put those changes in motion. I wanted to improve everything! From my very early twenties on, every winter break—the longest stretch of free time I had—saw me making intense daily, weekly, and monthly cleaning schedules (keep in mind I lived alone in a small apartment), elaborate plans to cook three meals from scratch every day, and detailed lists of goals to radically improve every possible area of my life (money! fitness! social life! career! spirituality!) Nothing was off limits.

But of course I couldn't keep much of that up for very long. All that overachieving did was leave me exhausted and feeling like a failure. Finally I realized all those resolutions were actually my brain trying to manage stress and anxiety. And unfortunately, a resolution as a mental management tool turns out to be pretty ineffective. In fact, my efforts achieved the opposite (see that exhaustion and sense of failure I mention above). So, many years ago, I finally gave up those elaborate plans and goals for each new year.

What do I do now instead?

Well, I do a couple of things. First, I take inspiration from the name of the month. January is named after the Roman god Janus, with one face looking backward and the other forward.

I look backward: what did I achieve this past year? For me, I'm proud to say I finished two books—one is my current academic book, Curteise ert e enseigné: Laywomen's Learning and Literacy in the High Middle Ages, now with readers atOxford University Press, and one is an edition of my grandfather's memoirs, which I've alluded to in recent newsletters and which I finally, finally finished and distributed to my family for Christmas. (Yes, I printed and bound it, because no writing project feels finished to me until I can hold it in my hands.)

I also look forward: sometimes I choose a theme word to guide me for the year. Sometimes I make a vision board. And I usually do set specific goals—but only for the first quarter of the year, or for the spring semester. I like to focus on units of the year rather than the whole thing. When I do that, I usually end up accomplishing most, if not all, of what's on my list.

But none of these goals have an elaborate, system-shifting, life-changing intent. They're very item-driven: one writing goal I have is to transform a conference paper I wrote this past year on women's literacy in medieval French romance into an article that I'll submit for publication into an early Middle English studies journal. Another goal is to set aside a few hundred dollars a month towards the various trips I'm planning to take this year. And I want to spend more time with the people I love, so I got started on that last night by holding a dinner party and cooking everything from scratch. My happy place!

Do you make resolutions? Let me know in the comments below!

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Image: photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash