On the end (and beginning) of the year

Image from the Internet Archive

In a couple hours, it’ll officially be a new year. And I’ve been thinking of really just one thing as we’ve gotten closer to that point— I need to buy a new calendar.

Okay, two things. One, the calendar thing. But also, I’ve been thinking about what makes the end of the year so significant for so many people (alright, really just for me— this is my blog, you can’t sue me). My thoughts on New Year’s are often the same as my thoughts on my writing goals.

A lot of my writing is for projects that nobody asked for.

(That came out wrong. Let me clarify.)

A lot of my writing is for projects I’m producing, and I’m managing. If I take too long to finish something, or if I decide to shelve a project, it’s likely that nobody will ever know. So, it's up to me to manage my uncanny ability to get distracted by YouTube videos or the news or music I'm listening to or did you hear that the Muppet Show is getting rebooted? There's a new trailer premiering tonight during New Year's Rockin’ Eve. I'm excited, but also a bit apprehensive, since-

See what I mean? It's easy. So, I set a lot of goals to keep myself on track. These goals have to be manageable, but more importantly, they have to be measurable. If I can't stop and look back on how much of what I wanted to do that I actually did, I’ll never know how to move forward.

I think that’s the reason I care about New Year’s to begin with. It’s the end of the year, which feels like a good time to look back on the entirety of it, something I think is essential. (I defer to Mr. Bueller on that one.) But, it’s also the beginning of the year, which makes it the perfect time to look towards the things I hope to do in the future.

So, can I do both? Can I look backward and forward in the same breath, evaluate and dream in one continuous sentence? More importantly, can I do that without setting myself up for failure?

In his book “The Anthropocene Reviewed,” John Green writes about the song “Auld Lang Syne,” the classic folk song often sung on New Year’s Eve. (There’s a video version of it that I watch every year around this time.) He suggests that the song is still so popular because “it’s the rare song that is genuinely wistful--it acknowledges human longing without romanticizing it, and it captures how each new year is a product of all the old ones.”

That’s exactly what my view of New Year’s Eve is— wistful. But, the thing about wistfulness is that it’s rarely helpful. If my goal is genuinely to look forward into the upcoming year, I have to make goals to give myself something to work toward. If my goal is to look back on the previous, then it can’t be through an overly romanticized (or aloneicized, as the case may be) lens. I have to be a realist about what happened, good and bad, and I have to be an optimist about what might come next.

This is why I always think of my writing goals. I think of what I was hoping the year would be like and what it was like, and I look towards what might happen next year and what I hope will happen. It’s a bit complicated sometimes, to balance the two. Maybe that’s what the night is for, though— to be a transition. Every year is the product of all those that came before, and whatever I do will have impacts that echo onward for potentially years to come. That’s a scary thought sometimes. I don’t want to look back and miss something important, just like I don’t want to (and to make sure I don’t) move into whatever comes next unprepared.

Sometimes, it helps to remember, then, that I’ve never felt prepared. Every year, things have happened that I liked and things have happened that I didn’t. Regardless, I’ve felt this same mix of apprehension and ambition. So, perhaps, I’ll continue to feel that. Maybe, even, that feeling isn’t a bad thing. I don’t know quite how to process everything and how to move forward, because it’s always new. But, I recognize the feeling because I’m still the same person. A little different with every year, yes, but also with something fundamental at my core. I think. I’m not really sure. Maybe someday I’ll figure it out. But, more likely, I’ll keep wondering. Looking backwards and forwards, never quite sure if I’m getting it right.

“For auld lang syne” translates roughly to “for old time’s sake.” But the old times were never as good as I now think they were— and I imagine the future will never be as unmanageable as I worry it will be. So, here’s to the New Year. For everything that’s gotten us here and everything that’s coming next, one moment at a time.