New Year Energy vs New Year Anxiety
We made it. 2020. A new year and a new decade for us to fill with our hopes and dreams and fuck ups and failures.
I honestly can’t wait.
I love the new year. I love how I feel the last days of a year as it dwindles down and there is a rise in the pulse that surrounds us. I feel rejuvenated, like I’ve been given another chance to compete in some contest. I take the last few moments of the year to get excited and pumped up for a fresh sheet of paper in my life. But that rise in pulse is not just joyful energy. It is also crippling anxiety that while ‘this year will be different’ this year will also be exactly the same.
The start of the new year pulls in all our failed attempts to better ourselves. This is what lingers in my brain as the clock strikes twelve. I have all that beautiful twirling golden energy around me and suddenly, a piercing bolt of darkness comes in and reminds me of all the things I didn’t do last year. Or the year before. How can I possible achieve it all? Should I bother to make any goals? Does everyone expect me to finally prove I am a writer and actor? How can I actually do that?
How will this year be any different than the rest because by March, I am over it all.
Energy battles anxiety and neither really win. They kind of share the spotlight. I choose to ride alongside energy the most but there’s the fear of failure right behind us. It is not only fear of failure though. It is also the brand new year and clean slate and what are you going to do with it?
Treat it like every other day, no change, just different numbers when you write the year down.
Embrace the newness, welcome it and jump into the icy waters with eyes closed and see what happens.
A million other options. There is no right answer. We all don’t automatically become better people who achieve their goals immediately when January 1st rolls around.
I’m a mixed bag of energy and anxiety when I open my eyes to a new year. It’s a constant struggle. Energy can lead you to burn out because you’re running so fast to keep up with the timing you’ve imagined in your mind and how things are supposed to be. Anxiety can hold you back, too. It can put everything on pause as it analyzes the risks. You know how you imagined it to be and anxiety shows you how it can never be that.
There’s a lot of pressure in a new year. I’m trying not to feel it as I navigate my way through day one. I made a list of goals as I do every year but I tried something different this round. I made a massive list of goals in different categories. I stared at them for a while, the blue pen making my handwriting look fancier than it is. Then I wrote down five achievable goals. It wasn’t that my goals are not achievable, they are. I made a lot of them though and that’s something I’ve done in the past and felt anxiety win over energy. With fewer goals to focus on, I could use my energy better. And when I achieve them, I can pick another from my long list and go for that.
Less anxiety running the show and scrambling through a long list, more energy in the right places focusing on fewer things.
I know a new year is different for us all. There’s so much rolled up into a pretty glass ball that drops at midnight. This year will be different, we all say in unison. Maybe this time it will be.
