Is it normal, on New Year’s Eve, to look forward to a new year of resolutions as opposed to a kiss?

Don’t get me wrong: I have never been one to think of a new year in terms of “new year, new me.” I realize the turn of a calendar page doesn’t mean my personality’s done a complete 180, and suddenly I’m willing to completely change all my habits and become my best self. I am also not one to make a resolution like “I want to get healthy.” Not that it’s not a good idea and all, but it’s non-specific. I’m a complete nerd, very into the idea of setting SMART goals. In case you’ve never heard what that means, SMART stands for:

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Relevant

Time-sensitive

It’s an idea that comes up a lot in school and work goal-setting, but I naturally started approaching New Year’s resolutions the same way. For me, it was just better to know what constituted success. “Get healthy” isn’t useful but “workout for 30-minutes 100 times” I can measure. I also am not generally a fan of daily goals; they’re too easy to fail. I prefer a goal that doesn’t expect perfection.

Even if I expect perfection from myself in meeting my goals.

I don’t know exactly when I got obsessed with making New Year’s resolutions. I think I started making them back when I was in high school but like most people who make resolutions, I often forgot what they were within 2 weeks of the new year. As time went on, however, I got better at some of the resolutions I made. At first, it was just resolutions around how many books to read, though I have to credit the website/app Goodreads with that. I think the first year I truly committed to my resolutions was probably 2019. And that was only because my resolutions were absurd.

In 2019, I set the New Year’s resolution to write for 500 hours in a year. I also set a reading goal of 45 books but it was the writing goal that kept me constantly aware of resolutions. In the past, I had never set a writing goal like that. All writing goals I set tended to be more small-scale, specific to a particular month or a particular draft. I had never made a blanket statement on the time commitment to give my writing. But the way I figured it, if I wanted to make something of myself as a writer, I needed to take the work seriously. And 500 hours total meant about 10 hours a week, which seemed like a completely reasonable goal, even though I also worked a full-time job (still do, but that’s not the point right now).

Spoiler alert: the goal was not as reasonable as I thought. It burned me out. I spent almost everyday working on my writing for at least an hour if not more. Making other plans stressed me out and made me feel guilty for not spending that time on writing instead. Still, these warning signs didn’t stop me from achieving the goal and then setting a new resolution to write 550 hours in 2020.

Now, if you’ve been alive for longer than a minute, you’re probably all too able to guess that writing 550 hours in the year 2020 didn’t work. I lost my ability to write in coffee shops, plus the whole world was completely burnt out at best and devastated at worst, so emotionally, I wasn’t in the right place to write at that kind of pace. I knew I couldn’t. I knew it wouldn’t even be smart to so much as try.

Didn’t stop the guilt though. Even if I did achieve every other one of my 2020 resolutions and still managed to work on writing for 452 hours in the middle of a global pandemic.

Flashing forward to 2021 New Years resolutions, if I remember correctly, I started drafting my list in August of 2020. The sixth version of my resolutions became the one I went forward with into the year 2021. There were 9 of them, including:

1. Read 72 books.

2. Query PROJECT 1

3. Finalize PROJECT 2

4. Complete at least 30, 30-minute workouts

among others. And to be fair, I completed all of these resolutions. Except one: write 5 total novel drafts. Of which I finished 1. I talked about that topic a bit last week.

Looking ahead to New Year’s Resolutions for 2021, I’ll admit I’m filled with mixed feelings. The excited part of me is ready for a fresh slate, to let go of this feeling of failure since I didn’t achieve one of my goals. However, the other part of me is a mix of shame and fear of the resolutions before me. I’m not used to feeling this fear but after 2 years in a row of failing a writing goal…I have to face a weird truth:

Maybe I can’t measure my writing progress.

It’s taken me years to learn, but I’m starting to think that there are certain goals you really shouldn’t measure, at least not so objectively. And that’s almost a more painful fact to face than the resolutions I didn’t achieve over the last couple years. I keep looking for quantitative ways to measure progress toward larger goals. The way my mind works is that, if I achieve whatever quantitative measure I’ve set for myself, then I am working hard enough toward my larger goal. In this case, if I write “x” amount, then I don’t have to feel guilty.

And as it turns out, this is such a toxic way to live.

I thought it was a great idea, to set myself these measures. That they were flexible enough that I could work on whatever project mattered to me at the time but substantial enough that it looked like I was treating my writing like a job. It seemed to me like setting a homework goal or a studying goal. Like “if you study for this exam for two hours, you’ll probably do fine on the test and can stop worrying.” Objectively, that makes sense. Unfortunately, creating art is not the same as studying for a test.

In 2019 and 2020, I was so focussed on writing for a certain amount of time, I pressed through on writing a plot that wasn’t working. I wrote 10 versions of a story that wasn’t right before finally taking a break in 2020. Only now in 2021 am I finally working on “Draft 12v2” (don’t ask) and the plot is finally growing close to right.

In 2021, I feel like I failed as a writer because I only finished one novel draft. However, like I mentioned in a previous post, there were tons of other writing activities I worked on during the time. Plus I took more time on writing a draft slowly and getting it right, rather than writing it twice but fast. In the end, my New Year’s resolutions from 2019 through 2021 looked like they had no idea what I needed in order to make progress on my projects.

So…where does that leave my position on New Year’s resolutions?

I am still completely obsessed.

Maybe it’s a symptom of my anxiety (I wouldn’t be surprised if it was), but I still love setting resolutions. It helps me plan for the future. It means I take the time to think about who I want to be in the next year and what that person will accomplish. I set how much money I want to save, how much I want to read, what I want to do with my free time, etc. I set forward a structure for my year rather than looking forward to a big amorphous blob of time. When I have goals, I’m much more aware of time and asking myself if I’m really using that time in the way that I want.

There is always that risk of me over-scheduling productive time. Or of creating a resolution that doesn’t end up working the way I want to work. So if you are looking to create New Year’s resolutions in the same way as me, here are some recommendations:

1. Don’t write them New Year’s Eve! Start earlier in the year (even if just a few days) and maybe try a few different version.

2. Make sure the goals are SMART. This might mean different things to different people, but I find goals that are measurable the easiest to track and achieve.

3. Be okay with not achieving your resolutions. This is the one I most need to learn as well. But as the year goes on, your priorities change. And that’s completely okay! The important thing is that you make choices intentionally, even if they’re in reaction to things you have no control over.

4. Some goals shouldn’t be New Year’s resolutions. Remember: NYE is not your last chance to set a goal for yourself! Maybe you have a goal you want to set in March that will just last a couple months, or you prefer to set goals that coincide with the school year. Set goals that help you when they will help you!

In the meantime, the most important detail when it comes to making resolutions is this: you are setting an intention for how you want to live your life. They’re about you. Not about how other people want you to be. That way, when you reach the end of the year, you don’t have to wonder where the time went.

Okay, to be fair, you probably still will. Time’s weird. But at least you will have spent that time more in line with how you wanted.