The clock is ten seconds away from striking midnight. Your ears are ringing and and you cannot tell if a Calvin Harris or a Mark Ronson remix is blasting from the club's speakers. Your vision is flooded with the dense smoke of the club and flashes of sparkly tops and shiny leather skirts. You see a bottle of Grey Goose vodka making its way through a group of people with their mouths open wide as others cheer.
Now it's five seconds until midnight and you look around for someone ideal to kiss. You lock eyes with someone and without another moment to lose, you lock lips with this person and you wish each other a happy new year.
You wake up the next day, ready to take on January 1st and the other 364 days of the year during which you promised yourself you'd workout, eat healthy, and read more.
But let's be honest...Will you actually fulfill all those resolutions?
I'm usually in a positive headspace for three months, tracking my new year habits in my journal and taking notes of everything that I'm accomplishing. Then, summer comes and all my resolutions are nowhere to be found.
2020 showed me that expectations really lead to nowhere. Actually, scratch that. They do lead somewhere: a dark pit of disappointment.
So, for 2021, I'm setting up my new year's resolutions a little differently. I'm taking into account my own limits and abilities to form a list of things that are actually realistic for me and my needs. Although I love dreaming big and that's something I've taken a lot of pride in, it's also led me to periods of sadness and self-loathing, especially when I don't achieve all my dreams. For a goal-oriented person who powers through life by accomplishing projects and overcoming challenges, not fulfilling what I set out to do crushes me.
This upcoming year I'm deciding to change that and I hope to find myself somewhere in between...A place where I can be both. Both, meaning that I can be a go-getter, but also someone who isn't afraid to mess up, take a step back, or even let go. Here's to 2021!
In 2020 I realized I spend a lot of time in my head. Due to the pandemic, I live in my head even more now and often fantasize about life and what it could be.
Maybe I'll become a professional violinist! Maybe I'll move to New York! Maybe I'll start a clothing line! Maybe I'll open a brewery! Maybe I'll go to fashion school!
It's nice to dream, but it's also exhausting and disheartening. After a 15 minute daydreaming session, I'm not proud to say that I spiral downwards and ruminate on all that's not going well in my life. I'd wish for something bigger and better, leading me to grow disappointed in where I was in the moment. This year, I'd like to practice radical acceptance and truly ground myself in reality. I want to let go and trust that my life will take me where I'm supposed to be. I'm tired of suffering and holding onto anger, bitterness, and unhappiness that's self-created. Instead of asking, "Why me?" and "Why now?" I hope I'll get to a place of acceptance in 2021. And hopefully a freeing place, where I don't take life so damn seriously.
To get to this place, my goal is to dive deeper into meditation. I've been meditating since 2019 and have seen a difference when I start my day with a brief session. I'm more focused, self-aware, and positive. I recently switched from the app Insight Timer to Calm and I am loving participating in guided body scans. Sometimes sitting in silence just doesn't do it for me–I have to still focus on something and I've noticed individually focusing on parts of my body while meditating helps me experience the present moment clearly.
Because of major life changes in the past few years, I've lost my love for reading, which was a meditative way for me to relax and unwind. This year I'd like to read a total of six books or more–two books every season. I think having this goal will be better than just the general idea of "reading more." A concrete number seems manageable and doable!
Besides these personal resolutions, I also created career ones. My main project for 2021 is moving my blog from Wix to Wordpress. I had a lot of fun building this site, but Wordpress is widely used. I'm really excited to use a different platform and personalize my website even more. Along with that, I hope to post 2 blog posts weekly. With my marketing job, it's been hard finding a consistent routine, but I'm hoping that 2 posts will be doable.
As for my larger career goals, I want to learn more about digital marketing and branding strategies. I'm liking SEO and I want to explore other digital marketing niches, so I can grow more skilled in the field.
2020 was crazy and I'm so happy to say "Goodbye!" to it.
Did you make any resolutions for 2021? If yes, I'd love to read them in the comments!
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