I almost slept through New Year’s Eve

On New Year’s Eve my extended family lunched at the beach, padding our bellies with homemade chili, brownies, and artichoke dip to ward off the SoCal cold front blowing in off the ocean. With good food inside us and freezing cold outside, my sisters and I crawled into our beds before ten. We reflected on the last few hours, weeks, months, and eventually talked ourselves to sleep.

I rolled out of bed a full sleep cycle later, with five minutes left until midnight and a compulsive need to welcome 2015. “Guys, wake up!” I yelled, hurtling into the kitchen for drinks. And so—

Trader Joe’s Apple Cider microwaved in coffee mugs stood in for champagne, and we toasted the New Year with a few ironic selfies. #Drank #Rage #TurnUp2015

The next morning—okay, maybe the next afternoon—I blinked, stretched, and shuffled into the kitchen for my ritual morning coffee only to realize a glaring omission in my New Year’s Eve debauchery: I had forgotten to make a resolution.

It felt anticlimactic after a killer 2014 pledge to “live some stories, and write some too.” Yeah, I was pretty proud of that.

Now I’m lounging on the couch at 8:15 on a Wednesday morning, home alone. All my home friends have started their winter quarters, and my family has work. I’m enjoying the lazy angst and uncertainty of the Decembrists’ appropriately titled “Beginning Song.” And I’m thinking—

No one ever comes to you in June and says, “Wow, you finally did it! Wrote the Great American Novel about teaching judo and multivariable calculus at a volunteer school in the inner city. And you contributed real art to the music industry with that indie rock album written half in Swedish about the true beauty you see in your fellow humans every day at the gym, complete with that gleaming tuba solo on track six. And you were running on a paleo, gluten-free, vegan kale and quinoa I-only-eat-food-that-comes-out-of-a-recycled-yogurt-carton diet the whole time. How did you do it?”

And no one ever replies, “Yeah, well, back in December, I resolved to write every day, learn self-defense, get better grades, help out my community, be more artistic, learn a language, exercise more, take up an instrument, and eat healthy. Once it was diary-official, all the extra energy I had when I dropped twenty pounds just naturally channeled into those grand self-actualization projects. Duh.”

Life doesn’t operate so linearly. Am I saying that we can’t achieve those goals to which we aspire? No. But I have a lot of anniversaries every calendar year, and each one of those brings its own resolution. Every semester, I resolve to do well in my classes. Every birthday, I resolve to stay young. At the annual holiday tea with my high school comrades-in-arms, I resolve never to let them drop out of my life. Every season, I resolve to make this my favorite season. Every morning — and Saturday afternoon — I resolve to eat breakfast. Every time I hear the song “Hold On Loosely,” I call my mom. Every time I sneak ice cream into my pathetic, lactose-intolerant insides, I resolve to never indulge in frozen, dairy-based desserts again. Every time I open Facebook, I resolve to be more interesting.

While a grand New Year’s Resolution might help some of us narrow down what we want from ourselves, it’s these personal resolutions that work for me over time — resolutions I make not to honor a tradition, but to satisfy the unplanned and organic demands of my soul. Or my stomach.

As I learned on New Year’s Eve, honoring tradition merely because the world will end if you forget or skip a year, doesn’t make up for a lack of interest. Traditions can compress and organize our feelings, can help those of us who are set in our ways, to live a little. An eternal pessimist, I still managed to enjoy myself at Thanksgiving because “it’s the holidays. I should be happy.” A culture snob, I still watched Elf and Love Actually because “it’s the holidays. I should cut loose a little.”

But traditions are like psychosocial alarms that remind us of things we should be doing all the time.

Now, I’d rather not have to dress up in some simultaneously slutty and clever costume more than once a year, and one Oscars ceremony is gaudy and pretentious enough to come every decade or so, but human decency and a little joie de vie aren’t limited to November and December. A few summer action flicks and a Friday night romantic comedy won’t kill me, and resolutions aren’t limited to December 31.

So no pressure, 2015. This year, I resolved to be present for next New Year’s Eve. To safeguard a tradition that I love. I don’t want to wake up feeling cheated by the universe. But that resolution is 344 days  from relevance. I have other resolutions to keep and to forget that will crop up all year long. I’m looking forward to it.

Image source: www.nwei.org