Happy 2020! I hope you saw in the New Year at a raucous gathering with lots of friends and loud music. Unless you’re like me. Then I hope you didn’t. Then I hope you had a quiet evening with a few loved ones and fell asleep early despite the racket next door.
My preference is to bid the old year a gentle goodnight around ten o’clock, then wake up before my family does on New Year’s Day and sit by the Christmas tree with my cat, my caffeine and my journal.
I’m a morning person. That means New Year’s Day is more meaningful to me than New Year’s Eve, if only because I’m awake for it.
I suspect I’m in the minority though. A quick internet search reveals hundreds of New Year’s Eve traditions here and around the globe. There are some common ingredients: alcohol, food, fireworks, alcohol, kissing, bells and alcohol, and none of those on New Year’s morning. As the designated driver at every party I go to, I can only guess that the alcohol allows the revelers to forget the worst of the past year and start the new one off just as badly.
My New Year’s routine is my effort to not only start the new year off right, but to close out the old one well too.
I’ve never been one to make New Year’s resolutions probably because I’ve never been one to keep New Year’s resolutions. Instead I see the holiday as the perfect time to recommit to what’s important to me: my family, my spiritual life, my health and my passion for writing.
I start by writing down my thoughts about the year that was. What am I grateful for? What did I accomplish? Where did I fall short? What did I learn? Hindsight is 20/20, you know. And there you have it: My first bad pun of the New Year.
Then I look to the year ahead. No 20/20 for that, just that wonderful feeling of optimism that accompanies New Year’s Day for those of us who aren’t suffering with a hangover. What do I want to do differently? How can I use what I learned to make the next year better? What are my goals? What do I dream about and hope for? How can I make a difference by doing what I do best?
To me it’s about steady growth over the years rather than the sudden transformations that New Year’s resolutions sometimes demand. Incidentally, this is the same early morning check-in I like to start my birthday with, only without the Christmas tree. My birthday is in August and usually we get it down by then.
Whatever your New Year’s routine, I wish you a perfect 2020 and not just in hindsight.
(Dorothy Rosby is a syndicated humor columnist and the author of three humor books, including the soon-to-be-released Alexa’s a Spy and Other Things to Worry About, Humorous Essays on the Hazards of Our Time.)
Dorothy Rosby
Author of Alexa’s a Spy and Other Things to Worry About, coming soon
www.dorothyrosby.com
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I Used to Think I Was Not That Bad and Then I Got to Know Me Better