New Year’s Resolutions and The Ins and Outs of 2025
By Abbi Zepeda, Art from Ashes Intern
We are approaching the end of the first month of 2025, and as celebrations for the Lunar New Year kick off around us, I find myself once again swept up in the idea of complete and total reinvention. During the next few months it will become impossible to escape the narrative of “becoming a new you” and all the ways in which you can change for the better now that a new year has started. It’s an attractive idea – shedding the past year like a butterfly emerging out of a cocoon and becoming a “better” person through the simple steps of written resolutions – but it’s never been the most realistic one. Inevitably it will come time for the let down of perceived “failures” in sticking to resolutions; the shame of not stepping into a new body and reinventing yourself to the point of impossibility, the down-slope of motivation that comes with not being able to perfectly stick to resolutions like it feels you “should.”
I know that I’ve experienced all of that before – losing confidence in my ability to be successful because one slip up or missed step left me unable to keep up with the strict resolutions I had set for myself. I have struggled with the renewal of the year because of this – preemptively preparing myself for an eventual lapse in my ability to keep up with the culture of New Year’s Resolution fever. But this year I want to try something new. I want to give myself more space and grace when I create my resolutions – and in doing that I want to share them with you all here.
My resolutions for the upcoming year are going to be more concrete than they have in the past. I’ll be borrowing from the SMART goal setting practices that I used to bemoan doing in my high school classes to make sure everything is truly reasonable to complete – and I’ll also be focusing on different goals this year than from prior resolution lists. Too often I think resolutions focus on making us into entirely different people – but I want to focus more on enriching myself over reinvention. I’m hoping that a focus on refreshing myself instead of completely transforming will help me with the self-love aspect of my resolution making; I want to embrace myself how I am.
But resolutions aren’t the only way to enjoy New Year’s festivities. In the past few years it has been a trend on social media to post your “ins and outs” for the upcoming year – echoing the trend-based articles from major magazines but making them more personalized and “relatable” to your individual likes and dislikes. It’s something that has been pretty endearing to me – seeing all of the different things that people have been enjoying and what they hope other people will begin to enjoy with them. As we move into 2025 I wanted to make my own little version of those lists here, and hopefully inspire you all to make your own “guides” for what you want to bring into the new year.
IN
- 2000s indie music
- italian soda
- book clubs
- decorating the cover of your journal
- earnestness
- saving receipts for too long
- glasses chains
- sincere text messages to friends
- email signatures
- cuticle care
- dancing
- wearing mismatched socks
- folding gum wrappers into hearts
- cola scented things
OUT
- ironic enjoyment
- accepting less than you deserve
- setting unrealistic expectations for yourself
- worrying about things you cannot control
- self-deprecation