New Year, Same You

May you surpass your lowest expectations

Hi Cringers,

There must be a word (I’ll bet it’s German) for the build-up to nothing that is New Year’s. 

When I think of the epitome of this feeling, I think of the lead-up to 2000.

Some thought computer systems would stop working at midnight and everything would go haywire. 

We spent an estimated 300 billion dollars globally (half spent in the US) on Y2K-bug prevention (repellent?).  

Some feared the government would collapse and elevators would malfunction the moment 9’s turned into 0’s. It would be mayhem, chaos—apocalyptic!

So, at 11:59 PM, at the turn of the millennium, I held my breath, waiting for something big to happen, for the other shoe to drop.

I was a tween then, so it was also a point when [insert health teacher’s voice] things were changing for me inside, outside, bodily, socially, and emotionally.

I imagined the clock striking midnight, the earth quaking, lights going out, car alarms blaring, and everyone’s brain imploding into a mess of machinery. We had been a simulation all along…

Or, maybe a stage door opening…it had all been an elaborate set, some version of The Truman Show (released around that time in 1998).

Reality would rupture in some unknowable, impossible way revealing…something…

On top of the 2000s excitement, there was all the regular New Year’s hype: the new year as the opportunity to be better, do better, and improve your life in all the ways you hadn’t managed to the year before. 

Others half or wholly anticipated a cosmic shift, the second coming, or an alien invasion.

And some simply saw the New Year as a chance to drink, let loose, celebrate life, and/or forget about reality for a moment. 

In the first minute of the new millennium, people popped bottles, cheered, and kissed just as they had every New Year’s. Then, it was done. No curtains lifting, stage doors opening, aliens landing, elevators combusting, nothing.

It felt like it did in 1999, no better, no worse, but all the same.

This is how every New Year’s has felt since—momentous and uneventful all at once.

We go into January with good intentions. We decide to get up early, go to the gym, and eat more kale, energized by a renewed vigor for life.

We repeat mantras like:

This is the year I’ll follow my dreams. I’ll become the person I’m destined to be, the idealized version of myself written in the stars and swimming in my DNA. I’ll start living my truth, fulfilling my destiny, or at least working on being a little less irritable. 

Or, if you’re January 2000 me, your mantra was a little less lofty, something like, Get through middle school.

I still get the same simultaneously hopeful and deflated feeling around New Year. 

I don’t like to put big expectations on a day or reflect too much on what I should have done or need to do. 

I prefer to do as the Danes do and set low expectations. That way you’ll have a higher success rate for achieving your goals.

This is way better than promising yourself you’ll run ten miles a day only to end up two months later in the couch with a bowl of cheese puffs watching reruns of Below Deck like it’s 2023.

Better to aim low and commit to going for a walk every other morning. It’s doable, low-pressure, and very Danish (though biking would be the better example here).  

When you set the bar low, you set yourself up to achieve achievable dreams, which in turn boost your confidence and self-esteem.

I’m writing this a week before New Year’s Eve 2023 and you probably won’t read this until January 2024, so this is past me with a reasonable, low-pressure message to us all:

“Hi, future us, hope we’re recovering from the disappointment that is inevitably January 2024. May you meet or surpass your lowest expectations this year. Wishing you a reasonably pleasant 2024.”