The Strange Collision of Christmas, Spending, and Self-Improvement
Every year, as soon as Christmas hits, New Year’s shows up right behind it.
Reflection and planning happen all at once — while we’re also being told YOLO, spend freely, buy gifts for everyone you know, and celebrate nonstop. It’s a strange overlap. We’re financially stretched, socially overextended, tired, and reflective… and somehow this is also the moment we’re supposed to set big life goals.
Even on a smaller scale, the pressure feels constant. Christmas gifts, birthdays, Valentine’s Day right around the corner — sometimes I don’t even like the idea of having to buy gifts back-to-back, let alone overhaul my entire life in the middle of winter.
What Are We Actually Celebrating?
New Year’s Eve itself is its own contradiction. It’s glittery and romanticized — the one night a year where staying up past 11pm feels normal. We’re celebrating… but what exactly?
Are we celebrating a new year?
Or are we really celebrating the end of the old one?
It almost feels like a quieter version of Christmas — except instead of naughty or nice lists, we’re handed resolutions. Celebrate if you did “good” this year. Set a goal for next year. Improve something about yourself.
But what if you didn’t hit the goal?
What if the year was hard?
What if you’re exhausted, broke, or just surviving?
Why are we expected to declare goals in one of the most depressing seasons of the year — when daylight is short, money is tight, routines are off, and motivation is low?
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe resolutions exist to distract us from the post-holiday financial hangover and seasonal sadness — something shiny to focus on until normalcy returns.
Why New Year’s Resolutions Have Never Worked for Me
Either way, resolutions have never really worked for me.
Not because I don’t want to improve — but because the structure itself feels flawed.
I’ve failed almost every New Year’s resolution I can remember. Not because I didn’t care, but because they became distractions — ways to hyper-focus on one “fix” while ignoring everything else in my life.
Smoking, the Gym, and the Illusion of a Fresh Start
Take smoking, for example. For years, my resolution was always I’m quitting smoking. Meanwhile, my health was struggling in every other way too — diet, sleep, stress, movement. I wasn’t exactly eating well and chain-smoking on December 31st, then magically becoming a new person on January 1st.
I’ve quit smoking now — and I’ll write about that separately — but it had nothing to do with a resolution. I quit many times before I quit for good. None of them happened because the calendar flipped.
The same thing happened with the gym.
I’ve done the classic two to three times a week resolution more than once — always starting from a completely sedentary place. I’ve lived in my apartment for over six months and I still haven’t seen the inside of the gym. Meanwhile, the real goal in my head was losing 50 pounds, not 10.
Saying drink less on a drinking holiday is another contradiction entirely. For anyone who struggles with alcohol, that champagne toast alone turns it into a mental nightmare.
Why “Good” Resolutions Still Set Us Up to Fail
Even the most well-intentioned resolutions fall apart under scrutiny.
Getting organized doesn’t happen in a day — it happens through routines, small decisions, and constant adjustment. Trying to do it all at once just leads to overwhelm and mistakes.
Career changes around Christmas? Historically terrible timing unless you’re pivoting into gig work.
Spending more time with friends and family? Why does that need to be a resolution at all? Why not just… do it when you can?
The common thread is that resolutions ask us to declare big changes all at once — publicly, rigidly, and often unrealistically. And once we slip, we label ourselves as having failed.
That failure is what sticks.
Once I missed a workout, smoked a cigarette, or ate the “wrong” thing, I didn’t just break a resolution — I gave myself permission to stop trying until next year. Failure became a pause button.
The Lie We All Quietly Agree To
No one even asks about resolutions later anyway. Did you complete yours? is met with vague answers — the self-improvement version of world peace in a beauty pageant. Lofty goals everyone agrees with, few people actually hit, and most people quietly abandon.
When you look up the most common New Year’s resolutions, they’re almost all the same: self-improvement, learning, hobbies, community, health.
These aren’t once-a-year goals. They’re everyday life things.
What I Do Instead of Making Resolutions
So instead of resolutions, this is what I do.
Every year, I reflect — honestly. I look at what went well, what didn’t, what I learned, and what I’d do differently if I could. I always have regrets. I always have growth. That’s normal.
My only real goal is simple:
Do a little better than last year.
Ideally, a lot better — but a little better is enough to start.
I don’t want to focus on one thing. I want to focus on everything, slowly. When you slow things down, you create space to think instead of hyper-fixating. Improvement happens in increments — one percent a day, or even one percent a week. Over a year, that’s massive.
Sometimes I beat myself up thinking about how stupid past-me was. But that’s another thing I’ve learned: growth looks dumb in hindsight because it means you learned something.
Why the Featured Photo Matters
The featured image for this post is a throwback house-party photo — my twin sister and me ringing in 2013 with friends Danny and Amanda. It feels like a completely different lifetime.
We’re not close anymore. Some of us drifted. Some married, divorced, remarried. One of them eventually moved to Vegas, weirdly enough. Now we mostly exist in each other’s lives through Facebook memories and Instagram stories.
Looking at that photo now makes me laugh — not in a sad way, but in a wow, life really moves way. That night felt so permanent back then. It wasn’t. None of it was. And that’s kind of the point.
Laughing at the Absurdity of It All
New Year’s Eve, for me, is about reflection and laughter. Sometimes I’m out on the Strip in Vegas, sometimes I’m in bed by 10pm. Either way, I laugh at the absurdity of it all — the pressure, the expectations, the way life changes so dramatically over time.
At 39, maybe that’s the real resolution.
Laugh more. Reflect honestly. Keep going.
And try to do a little better next year — without declaring war on yourself to do it.