I’ll be honest: the holidays are not my favorite time of year. Between teachers trying to cram in every possible detail of material before break, the inevitable cold or flu that circulates many times throughout 330 W. Webster, complete darkness by 4:30 pm—and the added nerves this year surrounding the college process—the end of the year usually amounts to stress and exhaustion.

For me, working to stay abreast of end-of-year craziness means I’m admittedly usually not my best self. I’m sleep-deprived, I’m cranky, and I let a lot of non-essential things slip through the cracks.

New Years’ believers would consider this the perfect reason to make New Years’ resolutions, but working on self-care has made me realize that I would argue the opposite.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not anti-self-improvement, nor do I think I don’t have any room for growth—far from either of those. I do, however, believe that New Years’ resolutions—particularly those that come in response to heightened holiday anxiety that isn’t present throughout the rest of the year—are typically ineffective.

First, stress is a natural human feeling. Crankiness is a natural human feeling. And some nights, life is going to get the better of my sleep schedule. This is especially true for a high-school senior nearing first semester finals. Resolutions to “be less stressed” or to “sleep more,” reactions to my holiday-stressed-induced behavior, are essentially asking to be broken at this point in my life. To me, self-care means recognizing this and allowing myself to experience these emotions instead of making reactionary resolutions, thus trapping myself in a cycle of repent, repeat, repent, repeat.

Secondly, I believe New Years’ resolutions artificially attach a date to self-improvement. It’s easy to work towards achieving goals based off a calendar, but it’s also easy to think, “darn it, I missed my chance, I’ll just try again in 2021,” when New Years’ resolutions are broken. Every year, I see people working to uphold their resolutions the first few days of January, then “rebound” the first few days of February, only to trickle off in March. 

In reality, self-improvement is a nonlinear and continuous process. Some days are going to be more successful than others. One mistake is not going to derail or damage personal growth enough to justify no longer trying. 

This New Years’, I won’t be making a forced, futile attempt to magically become unstressed, then feeling guilty when I inevitably fail to do so. Instead, I will be working on recognizing the causes of my moods and behaviors––particularly irritation and stress––and finding ways to allow those states-of-mind to exist. To me, this seems like a more realistic and sustainable approach than attempting to control my instincts.