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Happy New Year, Steemians! Did you have a good new year’s eve? 2018 is upon us, with all of the blog posts and ads about being “a new you” and “your best self” in the coming year. I don't have any particularly insightful advice or raincoats/spiralizers/exercise gear to sell to you, so I thought I would just talk a little bit about my own new years resolutions. I personally love the idea of new year's — that we all get a blank slate, a chance to start over, a chance to be better. Of course, I realize that you can turn over a new leaf at any point in time, not just at the beginning of the year, but I like the pomp and circumstance that a new year lends to the occasion. For some reason, new year’s resolutions always feel a bit more important to me than resolutions I make at any other time of year. 
	
Surprisingly, this is the first year that I’ve actively followed any of my new year’s resolutions (I liked making them before, but not necessarily *keeping* them), so I’m feeling pretty good about life. I spent New Year’s Eve wrangling my email inbox into a semblance of tidiness for the first time ever (guys, don’t ignore your email inbox for five years and then expect it to be easy to clean. Let me be the cautionary tale. It took hours.), cleaning up the folders on my desktop, organizing and updating the apps on my phone, and generally doing digital housekeeping. I rarely ever do this, but I’m already surprised by how much of a difference it’s made to my mental state. Having an empty inbox, for instance, is a total game changer. One of my new year’s resolutions is to keep that inbox empty. Wish me luck!

Speaking of emails, another one of my new year’s resolutions is to write an accountability email to my friend every day. We set up a system of accountability emails a while back, but it fell by the wayside. We’re reviving it this year, and I’m so glad that she agreed to do it with me because I have so much that I need to do. 2018 is going to be a big year for me, since I’ll be graduating from college in the spring and subsequently getting a job and moving to a foreign country. No big deal. I’ll be fine. * hides under a rock *

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But I’m also really grateful for the accountability emails because every day (over the last three days… hey, it’s a start!), I’ve been reporting the progress on my novel. One of my biggest resolutions of the year is that I will write a novel, and I hope to have it done (and maybe edited?) before I graduate in May and real life kicks in. I’ve written 3,800 words so far, and I’m absurdly proud about it. The trick I’ve been using is an old one, but it works — I’ve stopped waiting for motivation or inspiration to kick in, and just make sure to hit a certain number of words every day. 

I’m finding that my resolutions are easiest to keep if I actually have an action plan for them (i.e. a word count I have to hit or an email I have to send), because my other resolutions about eating more healthily and exercising more have yet to materialize in any way. I also keep planning on meditating, and it keeps not happening… but hey, we’re only three days into the new year! There’s definitely still time to get those ones figured out.

I’ve been wondering lately how people view new year’s resolutions though… it seems like no one around me has made any resolutions this year. Do people see it as passé? When even my little sister is saying “No, I don’t make New Years Resolutions because they set me up for failure,” I have to wonder if maybe everyone in North America is just kind of over resolutions? Like, maybe they’ve gone out of style? I’m not sure. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below, and if you made any resolutions, tell me about those too! I’m always curious to hear about what people want to do in the new year.

Best,
theowlhours

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Images provided by Pixabay.