Pep Talk

On New Beginnings

Hi, Friend.

We’re just about done with this year. And what a year, full of all-at-onceness, by which I mean full of both the beauty and the terror Rilke wrote about: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

I’m sure you’re familiar with the branding around the beginning of a new year: “New Year, New You” is a phrase I’ve heard often. In other words: The old year is over, so why would we want to drag our same old selves into the new one?

*sigh*

Don’t get me wrong: I love the idea of new beginnings. I think we all want to live well and be content, and sometimes change is what makes that possible. But the more I sit with the phrase “New Year, New You,” the more I find myself squirming.

A few years ago I wrote a piece about rethinking New Year’s resolutions. Here’s a bit of it:

Like practically everyone else on earth, I have been ready for 2020 to end since the second week of March. This year has tested my endurance, perseverance and patience more than any other year I’ve lived. It’s been a year of both constant change and profound stasis. Like running on a treadmill – time was passing, but the scenery did not change. This was a year at home: living here, working here, helping my kids attend school on Zoom here. Even my book tour happened in my home office; one night I was in virtual New York, and the next I was in virtual Chicago.

I like staying in, generally speaking, but I am so ready to be out in the world again. I’m ready for the new year and all the possibilities it will bring. I’m looking toward the future with great hope, but I’m not making any of the typical New Year’s resolutions. Actually, I never do.

On one hand, resolutions are positive—it’s good to aspire, to set goals, to strive for better. On the other hand, I can’t help but picture myself standing at the bottom of a ladder, looking up at the rungs I need to climb: eat better, exercise more, work to meet X career goal, work to meet Y personal goal.

I’m not opposed to the idea of self-improvement; it’s a natural impulse, I think, to want more for ourselves. But I don’t like the idea of starting off the year at a deficit. As if, on day one of the new year, we’re already behind. I don’t like the idea of beginning with a spirit of “I need to level up.”

This is where language can save us, though, and give us another option. (I’m a poet, first and foremost, and a self-proclaimed “word nerd,” so of course I was curious about the origin of resolution.) We can trace the word back to the Latin resolvere, meaning “loosen” or “release.” Now this is a metaphor, an image, that I can embrace. It suggests I am enough on day one of the new year. I don’t need to do or be more; perhaps I actually need less.

I’m thinking about loosening and releasing again now, as we head into 2024. Instead of “New Year, New You,” I’m embracing a gentler, more open approach, and I’m reflecting on what’s weighed me down in 2023.

If, like me, you're wary of resolutions at this time of year, you might use these questions as a writing prompt: What can I set down at the end of this year instead of carrying it into the new one? What can I loosen or release?

Begin where you are, as you are. That’s more than enough.

And if, for whatever reason, the words aren’t coming right now, trust that they’ll be back. They always come back.

Thank you for being part of For Dear Life this past year. I’m wishing you—and your writing—all the best as we head into 2024.

Love,
Maggie