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:

• Do well in debate

• Push myself through the last few weeks of SAT and ACT successfully
• Exercise more
• Develop this blog into something I can be proud of