Tagged: new years

December 29, 2013

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in, and a pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves

It might not always be this glam, but this year, it might be for me :)

2013 was the year of the snake, aka the year of the struggle. It was all of the pent up stress of dealing with college, depicted in sighs, tears, and teeth-gnashing. As the clock strikes 12 on New Years’, seniors all over the country will one-by-one fall back exhausted into their beds, saying to themselves with a grimace, “I did it. I made it. Second semester senior, here we are.”

In the case of the optimist and the pessimist, which one are you?

Which one am I?

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January 12, 2013

Homeless For A Day

New bed, am I right or am I right? ^

An Ode to A New Home.

No, I was not actually homeless for a day. Perhaps this title was a little misleading. What I mean to depict is that I’m moving to a new house in a few days, and so the process of moving from one location to the next will essentially make me “homeless for a day” (or so).

A new house represents a new beginning. We are going to move into our new home just around New Years, so this winter will be full of clean slates and fresh starts.

A new house means no scuffs and scratches on the walls. It’s when all of your belongings are stuffed into boxes and there’s no excuse not to organize all of your possessions, because speak now or forever hold your piece; if you put it off now, organization is going to stay at the bottom of your to-do list FOREVER. It’s the perfect time to reorganize your closet or rearrange your furniture.

Typically, moving is more effective than “spring cleaning”. This is when that “out with the old, in with the new” phenomenon takes place. It’s the best time to toss your junk and buy newer junk. Toss out the old couch, and bring in that new futon!

A new house means choosing a new wall color, and getting to mentally decide what exactly the meaning is of that “soft periwinkle” shade on which you took hours to decide.

Ah, the frustration of having to both disassemble and reassemble your bed over the time-span of two days, and the irritation of fitting objects through doorways and transporting heavy items up flights of stairs.

It means that you can use the brown cardboard boxes as an excuse not to get other things done because your work was “trapped in a room whose doorway was cluttered with boxes,” as I claimed to my third grade piano teacher as the reason why I didn’t practice piano for three weeks.

A new house means not being able to instinctively feel your way to the bathroom in the dark for the first couple of nights, because you haven’t adjusted quite yet.

It means reaching for a bowl to dump cereal in and feeling a new cabinet knob, and it means passing through the garage to leave the house and feeling an unfamiliar door handle.

It might represent a downgrade or upgrade of your life, depending on the difference of the sizes of your previous home and your new abode.

It might mean adding someone new in your life, whether it be a boyfriend, or three new roommates.

Maybe you’re moving just ten minutes down the street (like me) or potentially ten states over. But it means your street won’t look the same and you won’t be able to recall which mailbox is yours for a few days. You’ll have to memorize a new address and redirect all of your magazine subscriptions to a new location.

It means that the way the rain hits the roof sounds different, so you won’t be able to sleep as easily when it rains at night because the new and unfamiliar sound will intrigue you, and you’ll stay up listening to the curious rhythm.

November 30, 2012

This Time Next Month

At this time next month, we’ll be counting down the seconds until a new year (assuming we live through the 2012 apocalypse scenario). I find that the New Year always brings about so many interesting mood swings and behavioral changes in everyone. Yet, it’s still a bit of a cliché.

Celebrating the new year isn’t simply about toasting with champagne at a lavish, extravagant party, and welcoming the new year with a picture perfect new year’s kiss, is it? Not in my opinion. Of course, I’m still young and I don’t go to those types of parties at this period in my life.

The movie New Years Eve seemed to exaggerate all of these aspects of the cliché, portraying the holiday as a moment that your entire life has led up to, and that if you don’t accomplish your resolutions from last year, then you are a complete and utter failure. On the other hand, look what resulted from Zac Efron and Michelle Pfeiffer’s outstanding acting: an older woman ended the year with a kiss from a devilishly good looking man.

Whether you’re at a block party, in New York City to watch the Big Apple drop, or at home in your PJ’s with your seven cats, New Years seems to represent more of an occasion characterized by mental anticipation. It’s all about the resolutions, the clean slate, the new opportunities, and the bright outlook that nearly everyone starts with.

Even though you might not end up keeping the resolutions you make, it’s still probably important to try. No matter where you end up in terms of your goals, know that you are not alone. Everywhere around you, people are laboring to maintain their resolutions to spend more time with their family, work harder, sleep earlier, get healthier, etc.

On December 27th, your neighborhood gym could be as deserted as the Earth is after the Rapture in Left Behind because no one thinks exercising is a priority and because they are still in a food coma from delicious meals of the holiday break. But I wouldn’t be surprised if on New Years Day, the gym is packed full of people who yield hopeful, new outlooks on life that inevitably fade sooner or later in the year as they realize that they have more arbitrarily- “important” things to do.

However, on New Years Eve, some nostalgic and sentimental people will think back to their elementary school days, where they brought home a list of simple goals for the new year (do my homework, sleep before 9, stop eating candy). This select group of people will inevitably try to rekindle their childhood memories by writing down their resolutions on a paper and taping it to their steering wheel, adhering it to their bathroom mirror, or tacking it onto their bulletin board.

These goals will demonstrate hope and the notion of possibility to not just yourself, but those who care about you. They will be equally inspired by your “firmly established” resolutions, and follow suit with their own personal goals.

In reality, you can and should make resolutions and goals to accomplish whenever you want, at any time of the year. It’s a good idea to do so, because it gives you something to work towards. New Years Eve is simply an established time of year, when you know for certain that you are not alone, because millions of people around the world are probably making the exact same resolutions as you.

I wanted to write this article right around the time of year before exams and major tests generally occur, and before everyone else on the blogosphere starts writing about it, so I thought this moment of time was appropriate.

Thanks for reading; care to share some of your potential New Years Resolutions?

Here are a few of mine: