Ringing In The New Year
How to: start the year off right
… but really I don’t know how to start a year off right. With friends mostly, but, you understand the context.
I think it was the year of 2019. Yes, I know it was because it was my senior year of high school and I was already 18 on January the 1st. My parents went off to Madrid and I was in Spain with my friend and her family. We were at her grandparent’s apartment, eating seafood. I’m pretty sure the tv was on, but their balcony doors were also open so there were two views present for us.
Each person had a bowl of grapes, 12 in total, and we previously started drinking champagne. It was this day exactly, the December 31st/January 1st hybrid, that I learned I really don’t like champagne. But at the strike of 12, we all had a drink of something, and it’s imperative you remember this next part, we ate our 12 grapes when the clock rang. Not leisure eating, really pop in your mouth let’s finish off these grapes eating. Then we went out on the balcony, watching the fireworks over other people’s roofs before it was time to go out and spend time with friends. This was my best new years to date.
When I was 13, I read those Dear America books and I distinctly remember in the beginning of the Titanic edition, she would talk about how she never understood how adults would voluntarily fill their bodies with drinks that don’t taste good. Well, I had grown to like coffee now, but I’m still pretty against champagne.
This year, I definitely haven’t started the year off right. I was panicking because there was no way that I could finish the movies on my binge list (HBO Max and Netflix were taking off a lot of movies and I wanted to check out at least all of them) but HBO Max removed their movies early. I ended up watching What a Girl Wants on Netflix and then going down to the living room with my parents while we waited for the new year to begin. They had Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve on as per tradition, but no one was watching. We were just waiting for the ball to drop, and as we clinked our glasses of grape cider together, cheering “Happy New Year!” I couldn’t help but think to myself. I’m 20 now and is this just how it’s going to be again? Indoors all year with the company of only my parents? 13 year old me would be so disappointed.
Note: I know it isn’t their fault, and that we are all doing the best we can manage.
So that was my start to the New Year. The days after don’t get much better. I started this new novel idea, as I’ve finally reaffirmed my belief that I am meant to write books and not movies, and it is very much a work in progress. I have spent this week working on it, flip-flopping back and forth on I feel about it. Every day is a constant battle between “man, I really have to get better” to “I just don’t know how.”
My movie binge-watching was fun while it lasted, with a total of 30 movies in a week and a half. It really introduced me to a different range of movies I otherwise would not have seen but it left me feeling embarrassed and burnt out.
You see, I love sites like this and Letterboxd, but I have a terrible fear of being seen. In the beginning of December, I need a break from my constant writing, as it is my major, and I watched three movies in a day and a half. Naturally, I logged it into Letterboxd and two days after I talked about one of the movies with this boy in my class and he said, “yes. I noticed.” I felt so embarrassed.
And now I fear I have gone insane. Every month I feel more and more as if I have lost myself, and this month I have lost my attention span. I’ve been having difficulty reading for more than five minutes. So, I’ve been trying to watch bullet journal and life improvement youtube videos. I can’t believe I’ve become one of those people that need someone else to tell them how to be a person. Like in the movies when the character reads a bunch of self-help books. I used to hate that and say “why can’t you just know how to be???” I’ve tried to make peace with it by calling this Bridget Jones core.
2022 New Year’s Resolution(s):
To be a better adult*
Read at least 12 books
Do daily journals
Learn Tagalog
Weekly blog posts
Finish a first draft manuscript
I’m starring the first one because this is my second year actually making resolutions and last year my only resolution was to be a better person. This year is a bit more ambitious. Maybe I’m just wishing well that this week is just a terrible winter blues. But the year 2022 sounds promising, if I may call it that. But so did 2021. And 2020. And 2019. 2019 was a good year. Here’s to hoping for another.
Last watched: Rise of the Guardians (Netflix)
Last read: Cherry by Nico Walker