Yes, It's a New Year, But Is It Really A New You?

As I understand it from the various internet places I scour, the conventional wisdom is that the “new year, new you” ideology is intensely wrong and fundamentally woe-begotten.

Is this a reaction to the flood of ambition that erupts as soon as the ball drops on New Year’s? PERHAPS.

Is it a move to worship at the altar of inertia—i.e., how I am is how I want to remain? COULD BE.

Or is it just a righteous stubbornness toward the resolutions and goal-setting/tracking industrial complex, and all the minions carrying the water for this movement in the form of an entire industry of planners and BIG ASS CALENDARS? POSSIBLY.

As for me and my house, I have hit my limit with people online screaming at me about how “a failure to plan is a plan to fail” before unfurling a calendar the size of the Pacific Ocean and detailing how they’ve already meal-planned into November—which, if necessary, we could also see from space.

While I may not understand the purity of motivation behind rejecting the idea that a new year means a new me, I can explain my personal admiration for this notion: for me, the idea of not needing to change implies a generalized sense of satisfaction with how I am and how things are going.

But, dear reader, I cannot make this claim. In fact, I defy almost anyone to make this claim confidently. My confidence here lies in wondering if anyone’s December-self is truly a laudable, recommendable, or fully operational version of who they want to be.

Do you want to know how my diet went throughout most of December? M&M cookies from Publix, artisanal sourdough bread, handfuls of broccoli florets, and lemonade slushies from Weigel’s. Does that sound like someone who has life-hacked their way to a higher form of existence?

Also, at the beginning of December, I spent so much time in conversation with Wayfair’s customer service about the status of ordered packages that it added up to 12 complete days of my life. At one point, they told me that a chair we ordered for one of our kids was “somewhere in Illinois, but we can’t know for sure where,” like it was an escaped convict. They went on to tell me to “give it 6–7 days, and it will poke its head out somewhere, and we can get it to you.”

Hand to God, that chair was delivered to our home an hour later.

Wayfair—who has been a sponsor of the podcast (I only say that so you know I really mean this with the whole, entire clenched butt of my heart)—seems to function operationally as if Waluigi and Wario designed it as a collaborative psyop meant to maximize human frustration.

And yet, do you know what I did in the last week of December when I needed a new desk? I ordered one through Wayfair. Why? I don’t know. Why does anyone do anything?

Because futility, while frustrating, can be oddly comforting. Why? Because futility, at its core, is simultaneously familiar AND hopeful, which is a lot like thinking that a new year means a new you.

It probably doesn’t. But if it actually does, it’s kind of like having that chair from Wayfair—thought to be lost somewhere in Illinois—unexpectedly delivered to your door that very same day.