If you read the article on the Varsity team’s plans for New Year’s Eve, you’ll know that I celebrated the Earth’s orbit around the Sun from my sofa, watching Parasite in my pyjamas, with my family, and feeling generally unbothered about the whole New Year folly. When the countdown ended and we officially entered 2021, I didn’t feel even a tiny bit different. I was content, but lacked that specific New Year excitement you get from the promise of a shiny new year, unravelling out like a glossy ribbon. It truly only felt, as if by some unprecedented feat of temporal warping, that 2020’s timeline had been extended and it was December... 32nd. Mentally, I’m still living in 2020 - the lockdown announcement last Monday only confirmed it. If I haven’t yet entered the safe hands of 2021, how can I possibly set myself New Year life goals?

“I don’t believe I can set myself resolutions for life improvement when right now, the only spicy question I’m asking myself is: which shade of sweatpants is it today?”

Don’t get me wrong, I have always loved celebrating New Year. I was even more fanatic for setting resolutions. Reflection is usually the cornerstone of my January: writing down sentimental affirmations (that are inevitably forgotten by February) and looking to all that could be achieved in the New Year. But when there’s nothing around you to signpost that it’s 2021, all these yearly rituals have gone flying out the window - alongside jeans and brushed hair. This year I hadn’t even considered the tradition of resolutions until asked what mine were: my mind went… Blank. Nothing. I was indifferent to the idea of setting resolutions and soon began to wonder, why? With oceans of time to be thinking about arbitrary things right now, my indifference to New Year’s pledges soon became a fierce adamance against them.

The Cambridge Dictionary describes the word resolution as 'a promise to yourself to do or to not do something’. Truthfully, I don’t believe I can set myself sensational resolutions for life improvement when right now, the only spicy question I’m asking myself is: which shade of sweatpants is it today? Sanguine red? Sombre grey? Nautical navy? Not to forget the fact that we have officially waved sayonara to hairdressers for the next few months; I’m not convinced that split ends and outgrown locks manifest a passionate pledge to self-improvement. I could make a great deal of promises to myself right now, but I’ve no idea exactly when I’ll need to dig out that hairbrush again or when I’ll need to fold away my beloved sweatpants (although... they are super versatile...), so, how much point is there really in making promises?

“I’m enjoying each activity I do when I feel like doing it and not because I’m trying to meet some invisible gold standard for myself.”

Resolutions rely on the future, and right now we can see the future only as far as our noses. I did dabble in thinking about the future last month, but then not only did Kid Cudi’s new album drop, but a whole new Tier too, obliterating any future December plans. National lockdown being here again is an even stronger impetus to not venture too far ahead. My main takeaway from this is that right now, it’s best to settle into the everyday rather than hurl myself too far forward. And with that in mind, I refuse to set myself any New Year’s objectives.

This new outlook feels refreshing more than anything else. My world has shrunk to the size of my bedroom, so it makes sense that my ambitions have, for the time being at least, shrunk too. Instead of setting myself jarring goals on running, working, feeling, I’m saving myself the mental energy and, instead, taking life day-by-day; I’m enjoying each activity I do when I feel like doing it and not because I’m trying to meet some invisible gold standard for myself, in a time where very little is in my control. It’s made me heaps more content with these smaller things: trying out restorative yoga (heavy on the restorative), subjecting my family to various culinary concoctions, having a movie night on Monday, and Wednesday … and maybe, just maybe, Tuesday and Thursday too…? Between the yoga mat, my bed, the kitchen and my desk, there is no space for mulling over the future. I’ve found that ditching resolutions this January has been one of my best decisions to date this year - maybe you’d like to try it too.