New year, new me!
I say it like a joke, but I still mean it.
Every January, I wait for something to lift. I expect the date itself to do the work for me. January first arrives, and I check myself for signs of improvement—lighter, steadier, or more disciplined.
Nothing blatantly obvious jumps out at me. So, naturally, I start performing change instead.
I wake up early. I eat better. I move my body even when it feels joyless. I go to bed on time. I follow the rules.
I do everything that should count.
And then I wait.
I wait for relief, for proof that effort is supposed to feel better than this. I wait for the moment when it clicks, and I finally feel like someone who has their life together. Instead, the days stay heavy. The routines don’t save me. If anything, I feel more aware of what isn’t working.
That’s when the doubt starts.
If I’m doing everything right, why do I still feel like this?
There’s this disgusting expectation sweetly baked into resolutions that no one wants to say out loud: if you commit hard enough, you should feel different quickly. When you don’t, it feels personal. Maybe it’s a flaw in your discipline or a failure of character. I start holding myself to standards that I invented days earlier and then wonder why I can’t meet them.
Every year, I relearn the same thing I don’t want to accept; I don’t actually want growth—I want relief. I want change to be clean and immediate because I’m tired of sitting with myself the way I am.
Resolutions make it easy to believe that a calendar can interrupt a life: that habits, patterns, and old wounds will respect a singular date. They make it easy to believe that messiness can be scheduled out of existence. When it doesn’t work, the disappointment feels predictable and yet somehow still shocking.
We call it self-improvement, but it often sounds like criticism dressed up as motivation. The intention might be growth, but the language is punishment.
Do better. Be better. Fix this.
Real change doesn’t respond to pressure. It doesn’t announce itself. Most of the time, it feels indistinguishable from stagnation. You show up, you repeat yourself, and you wonder if you’re wasting effort. There’s no moment where it finally feels earned.
That’s the part I struggle with—the waiting.
The stretch of time where nothing looks different, and you’re alone with the question of whether showing up quietly is enough.
I still make resolutions. Not because they work the way I want them to, but because they expose something honest in me. I want my life to feel lighter. I want to stop constantly feeling like I am catching up to myself.
This year, I am not going to promise a transformation; I don’t trust that language anymore. I’m just trying to stay in the process without demanding proof that it is working.
I don’t feel better yet, and that’s the plain truth.
And for once, I’m not turning it into a lesson.