The Same Old New Year

New Year's Day... now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. - Mark Twain 

Mark Twain says it all. It's a new year - a time of renewal, of change. We write new years resolutions, full of hope, planning to carry them out for the rest of this brand new, perfect year. But of course, this never really ends up being the case. Fast forward a month in advance, and most of us have forgotten what it was that we even wrote on our New Years' lists. Life goes on, as before, and a new year ticks by.

This sounds pessimistic. But that's not the point. Basically, it's that I don't want to go through another new year with a list in hand, trying to force myself to change and bend to the will of words on a piece of paper. Change is gradual, not forced. We don't become new people overnight, but a little bit at a time. When I was little I used to religiously write my resolutions, each year promising myself I'd get it right, that this would be the year, that I wouldn't act up, that everything would be perfect. Come to find two days in that this wasn't my year, afterall. So in the short term - no, I didn't really will myself to change. But looking back, over all of these new years... well, I see how much I've grown, I've changed, and how many New Years resolutions I've accomplished not over the course of a single year, but rather over the course of my entire life, over each and every year. The lessons, the growing, the changing never stops. Each day, each new year is a journey.

So, I go into this New Year knowing that, firstly, this year won't be perfect. I expect failure, disappointment, and upset. Same as always. I also know that this year will be full of changes. Nothing will be the same as it used to be. Things always change - I'm ready for it. But while I'll try in some areas and fail in others, I know that, in many places, I will be met with success. When I stand at the edge of 2012, awaiting the ball drop (assuming the world hasn't ended yet, of course), I know I will be a different person than I was last year. I'll embrace it. The thing about growing up is learning that things aren't perfect, and that life isn't a fairytale. You don't always get happy endings, but it's life's little happy moments in between that makes it worth living.