Every year, you hear a lot of the same typical resolutions at the beginning of the year. People wanna lose weight, put their focus back into school, quit a bad habit, etc. While these can be good goals to have, you don’t have to use the first day of a new year as an excuse to try to achieve them. Good health and positivity should always be a goal and a standard we hold ourselves to. However, I don’t see what this has to do will the fact that you’re starting a new calendar. If you want to strive for something, don’t wait around for new years and don’t give it up by Valentine’s Day. You have the whole year and your whole life to try new things or work on improving yourself, so why do we focus this so intently on the first of a new year?

This isn’t to say new years is all bad. I’m a big proponent of tradition, and who doesn’t love a big party where we can all watch some of our favorite celebrities and drink sparkling something or other to celebrate that we made it through another terrifying year. Enjoy your time with friends and time off from school, watching the ball drop at midnight and scaring each other using party poppers all night. The holidays are a time to relax and spend with those we care about, not stress about the things we wish we had done differently during the previous year.

New Year’s doesn’t have to turn your life upside down. Keep the goals that you’ve been working towards! When new ambitions present themselves, apply yourself to whatever you’re working towards just as much as if it were January first. Don’t wait around for a new year to pursue new ideas, take advantage of the time you have. Put an end to the trend of “New Year’s Resolutions” that never last and hardly ever result in anything. Instead, this year, stay on top of what you hope to achieve over the next few months. Don’t make pointless resolutions if you are not gonna follow them, do something you will strive for instead. Make a useful resolution that you could succeed in, like something easy. Then the next year make a more challenging goal. Maybe next year, you won’t start another year thinking about all of the things you wish you could change.