Happy New Year! It is great to be back on campus in the exciting new year of 2024! With the start of the new year, many turn to creating resolutions: changes they would like to make in their lifestyles going into a new series of 365 days. I have always liked the idea of resolutions and making positive changes in your life in the name of a new calendar year and so, for many years, I have tried establishing goals in the name of change and fresh-starts. Usually, I set the goal of exercising more frequently (as many others do as well) but have yet to be successful. This is something I also know I’m not alone in. For exercising as a resolution specifically, I have always heard about the phenomenon where gym membership enrollments soar at the start of every new year, only for the number of gym membership cancellations to closely follow by February.
I think the most prevalent factor that leads to unmet resolutions/goals is unrealistic expectations. In my case: every time I set the goal of trying to exercise consistently, I was starting from ground zero. I expected to suddenly and drastically switch up my routine and would become discouraged when I wasn’t immediately successful, leading me to give up within a month of starting.
That is why this year, I am trying to go a different route. I am avoiding the typical resolution route with drastic changes and instead removing the pressure to be successful within the first month. I have tried to create goals for my year that are significantly more achievable than previous years. I wanted to share them in hopes that people who may have had similar struggles in following-through with resolutions could be inspired to find achievable positive changes for their own routines!
01- My Year in Music
One of my favorite things about the end of the year is yearly music recaps (such as Spotify Wrapped or Apple Music Replay). I get giddy at the idea of seeing how much music I listened to and which artists/songs took up the most of my time. For curious parties: Taylor Swift was my top artist of 2023, eating up a whopping 22,709 minutes (or over 15 consecutive days of listening 😅). These music recaps are great at reminding me about my year as I tend to associate songs to specific events in my life.
Lucky for me, I found an even more specific method of reflection through music via TikTok on New Year’s Eve 2023. This method involves creating a playlist and adding a new song to the playlist every day. This song can either be one that sets the overall mood of your day, was a song you listened to a bunch on that day, or cleverly references an event via song title (example: New Year’s Day by Taylor Swift for January 1st, or Birthday by Selena Gomez for your birthday). By remembering to add new songs to this playlist daily, I will eventually have a playlist of 366 songs (yay leap year!) that will be directly tied to each day of my year.
I have been very successful in this goal so far, with a playlist (titled ‘2024: a song per day’) that is about 1.5 hours long. This has been a great method of daily reflection through attempting to sum-up my day in one song, and I look forward to doing it for the remainder of the year!
02- Get more cultured (movies and music)
Another resolution/goal of mine this year is to become more cultured in media, such as movies and music. I am very much someone who reverts to comfort shows/music whenever seeking entertainment. If I am in the mood to watch a movie, I re-watch one of the same 20 or so movies in my repertoire. The same goes for music albums/artists. This year I am looking to branch out and find new media to consume. The inspiration for this goal comes from the same conversation I’ve had many times in my life with various people. This conversation typically consists of me not having seen/heard some form of media and then the other involved parties being shocked (and sometimes very offended) by this.
I don’t necessarily want to be without comfort though, so I am attempting to find a fair balance between consuming new media and reverting back to my classics (don’t worry Princess and the Frog, you will still always be my go-to girl). I think by attempting to maintain this balance, I will have an easier time turning to new media as opposed to feeling forced. This is a feeling that has previously come along with the pressure of consuming new media and lacking in the consumption of comfort media.
I have had no challenges finding new media to consume so far. I have relied on watching some well-renowned classics that I have never seen as well as listening to albums by popular artists that I haven’t explored yet. Some examples of new media I’ve consumed so far includes:
Movies
–Beautiful Boy (dir. Felix Van Groeningen)
–Black Swan (dir. Darren Aronofsky)
–How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days (dir. Donald Petrie)
–Ladybird (dir. Greta Gerwig)
–La La Land (dir. Damien Chazelle)
–Saltburn (dir. Emerald Fennell)
–Whiplash (dir. Damien Chazelle)
Albums
–Good Riddance by Gracie Abrams
–Happier Than Ever by Billie Eilish
–Starboy by The Weeknd
–Swimming by Mac Miller
I am very excited to continue expanding these lists with media that interests me and overall becoming more cultured! I am actually quite open to suggestions/recommendations, so should you feel inspiration to send me any, feel free to do so on Instagram, @sarah.leming ;)
03- Prioritize Me!
The final goal I have going into the new year is to generally prioritize myself and my well-being. This is something I have tried over previous years but found myself discouraged when there wasn’t immediate evidence of improvement. Throughout the duration of this year, I intend to make decisions that are ultimately going to prioritize my well-being. One example of this is my sleep pattern. I desperately need to work on improving my sleep schedule. I tend to stay up very late every night by scrolling on TikTok, doing some Late Night Talking (Harry Styles reference), or completing previously-procrastinated homework. This decision has caught up to me as I have classes within the 8am hour every day this semester, leaving me very drowsy and spacey. These patterns are ultimately not prioritizing my well-being and are begging to be addressed. In this instance, I am not pressuring myself to have perfect sleep within the first few days of trying, but I am attempting to tread in the right direction over the next several weeks. This is just one example of how I want to prioritize myself. I look forward to finding more ways to prioritize myself throughout the course of the year!
In conclusion, New Year’s resolutions aren’t necessarily a bad thing. The idea of these resolutions are wonderful! I think wanting to use the new year to make some positive changes is great! It is important to rationally create these goals, however, and to make sure they are realistic/achievable. A slight change of mindset can be helpful as well; being okay with lapse in progress and non-immediate results. I hope you were possibly inspired to create some achievable goals of your own, or just simply enjoyed reading about mine! I look forward to growing in this new year and I wish you all a wonderful start to 2024! <3