Some new year’s resolutions for 2023
Cracking the code so your new year’s resolution sticks
Claudia Culley, Associate Editor
The new year is here, 2023 has officially arrived. Despite the excitement leading up to the ball drop, eagerness for a fresh start, and the “2023 is going to be my year” mindset, I always find January to fall so flat. The Christmas tree comes down, the holiday season is over, and those everyday stresses come flooding back as you start that weekly routine once again.
The only upside to this depressing reality is the motivation of a new year’s resolution. I’ve never been huge on resolutions. I’ll give it a go for a couple of weeks, but by the end of January I’m back to my old habits. An Ipsos survey by Times-Tribune found that 80 per cent of new year’s resolutions fail by February, so I know I’m not alone in this battle.
Despite my bad runs with resolutions, I think I’ve finally cracked the code this year to make them stick. Throughout December, I spent time reflecting on 2022 by making mental notes of the new adventures I went on, memories I made, and things I accomplished.
During this period, I felt a profound sense of gratitude for my life. It made me feel genuine happiness. I thought about my past new year’s resolutions and what I wanted to achieve with them. Regardless of what the resolutions were, I went into them with the same goal in mind: to be genuinely happy and, somehow, I managed to find it.
This made me realize that finding genuine happiness is about your mindset and comes from showing appreciation and gratitude for your life. Therefore, my resolution for 2023 is to live life in the present by actively showing appreciation and gratitude for everyday things.
This starts by staying focused on the present moment. This can be hard to achieve, especially when you’re thinking about the laundry list of things to do or that awkward conversation you had with someone the other day. When I find myself in this situation, I take a deep breath and look around to find something I’m grateful for. This pulls me back into the present with a sense of peace.
Once I’m able to be more presently focused, I like to show appreciation for the things around me. Now, this doesn’t have to be a big gesture or any gesture at all. Rather it can just be an acknowledgment of appreciation in your mind. For example, when I wake up or go to sleep, I think about how grateful I am to have a comfy bed and a roof over my head. This never fails to start or end my day on a positive note.
With every meal I eat, I think about the time that went into growing, transporting, and cooking the food on my plate. When I get dressed, I think about how lucky I am to have clothes. When I drink cool water, relax on the couch, or do my favourite exercises, I think about how lucky I am to be doing all those things. It’s only been a week of living my life with gratitude for simple, everyday things, but in this short period of time I feel so much happier than I was even a month ago.
So, if your resolution this year has an end goal of finding genuine happiness, think about how you may want to work appreciation, gratitude, and living presently into your life. It may not be easy, but good things usually never are. Let’s really make 2023 our year!
Taking my time with entertainment media
Jonathan Pabico, Contributor
Whether you’ve failed or succeeded at them, new year’s resolutions remain a popular internet staple among writers and media outlets. If you still believe in these annual goals, you’re not alone as I made my own for 2023. One of those personal promises is pacing myself better with entertainment.
I’ve made this resolution because lately I’ve been treating my favourite media as a game of catch-up rather than a relaxing pastime. When I do manage to finish a podcast episode or movie, it feels increasingly like checkboxes I must tick off from their respective lists. I never give myself the time to savour or reflect on first viewings of new content or even repeated viewings of old content. I just move on quickly, as if it’s all a race to an imaginary finish line that’s not there.
Trying to cross off every item from every list can feel like those choose-your-own-adventure stories you read as a kid. On one hand, it’s cool that you can start anywhere, but it’s also a crutch.
With an endless supply of content available to users via streaming and other online platforms, I experience a fork in the road of either staying with that TV show I’m currently on or waiting for an album’s runtime to elapse, all so I can finally get to the next medium.
Granted, watching or listening to media one at a time obviously won’t get me any closer to completing those lists since new stuff is released constantly. Every list will only get longer, so the true aim of this resolution is to be more practical when experiencing, and enjoying, entertainment.
To complete my resolution, the plan is to constantly remind myself that there’s no deadline or schedule to meet when it comes to the arts. As absurdly intuitive as this notion is, it’s worth emphasizing, since there’s always a need to stay updated on the latest content immediately.
Moreover, those movies or series aren’t going anywhere and it’s not like anyone’s keeping score of how much media I consume. In pacing myself with entertainment, I hope to be more aware of these simple facts and not get too enthralled by pop culture.
Former talk show host Conan O’Brien in his podcast “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” spoke with punk rock artist Jack White, who unpacked how challenging it is to keep track of music today than it was when growing up in the early punk scene.
“It’s hard, it’s way more than it used to be. I used to be able to open up for NME Magazine in 2001, and I knew every band, every little punk band that was in there, and after a while, it’s gotten so large. There [are] so many TV shows, there [are] so many things out there. It’s very hard to keep up,” White said during his episode on O’Brien’s podcast.
While focusing primarily on music, White’s view nonetheless addresses the reality of an oversaturated art world. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to be on top of everything in entertainment nowadays, and even a famous rock star recognizes that. My aim is to stop trying so hard to view everything at once.
Perhaps I’m too ambitious or just downright impatient with my entertainment palette. Having said that, pop culture is still a big slice of the ham and pineapple pizza in my life, so here’s to a productive resolution for 2023.
Writing my way through 2023
Hailey Glennon, Contributor
For me, new year’s resolutions are a fun way to craft optimistic hopes and dreams for the upcoming year. While some people may use this tradition as a way to change undesired behaviors or fix a part of themselves they aren’t content with, I view resolutions as an open door to improve my habits in ways I hadn’t accomplished so far in previous years.
The last couple years of the pandemic allowed me to accomplish my goals of fitness and live a balanced lifestyle. So for 2023, I chose to focus more on goals relating to my passion of writing, specifically I want to dedicate more time to finding balance between the writing I do for school and the writing I do outside of the classroom.
As an English major and creative writing minor, writing is ingrained in my everyday life. When I am not writing an essay or short story for a class assignment, I’m writing my own book. I spend hours crafting characters in lush fantasy worlds, and I hope to see my hard work on the shelves in a bookstore one day.
However, it can be difficult to balance both these passions. I take school very seriously and dedicate many hours to making sure I read the materials and apply what I’ve learnt to the work I write. This takes up a lot of my time that I forget and have trouble finding time for my passion projects — the projects that sing to my soul and remind me of the real reason I enjoy writing so much.
This year, I am determined to find balance in both my writing lives. The books I write outside of school are being polished and refined and this is the year I hope to move down the path of publishing my work.
I want to do this while also keeping school a strong aspect in my life, making sure that despite my desire to have other projects come to the forefront, I will never let that sacrifice my level of dedication for getting good grades and learning new skills.
My first step to accomplishing this is by making sure I dedicate separate time to schoolwork and time for my own work. This could be done by making sure the days of the week are for school and the weekends are more for myself. Eliminating my tendency to procrastinate might help with this.
Finding balance in various aspects is always a good goal. While I have succeeded in working towards that in previous years, I am more than ready to work towards that when it comes to the passions I have in the creative aspects of my life.
Writing is so important to me, and 2023 is the perfect year to move forward with my creative dreams and manifest all the success moving forward.
My plan to create engaging video content
Brylian Marin, Contributor
I haven’t set a new year’s resolution in the last few years because I didn’t have something concrete to stick to. However, 2023 is going to be different for me. This year, I want to try to upload more on my YouTube channel and be more diverse with the content I include in my videos.
I would like to post at least three videos a month, ideally uploading at least once a week. If I have enough time and creativity, I want to upload two videos in a week once in a while.
By the end of 2022, I’d uploaded 69 videos over two years, varying in frequency. In the first week of this year, I’ve uploaded two videos already so I’m off to a good start.
To help me stick to a schedule, I created a series called “Steam-y Steals in 60 Seconds (or less)” on my channel. I talk about some of the most notable discounts for games on Steam or a digital distribution service for video games in 60-seconds or less.
The series helps me stay updated on gaming news and allows viewers to get into gaming without an obstacle to go through. As a bonus, it can be something I can make YouTube Shorts for if I want extra content.
Another goal for my YouTube channel is having a balance of the content I create.
When I first started, I created episode reviews for a few anime series I watched like “Jujutsu Kaisen,” “Sk8 the Infinity,” and “Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World” for most of 2021. Last year, most of the videos I worked on were videogame related. Even then, it was mostly Pokémon playthrough content. This year, I want to find a balance between both of those while adding new content. Finishing the episode reviews for the anime series is helping me stick to that goal.
Alongside finishing my Pokémon playthrough videos from last year, I have a special playthrough planned for later this year in a small collaboration with another creator.
While I plan to start new playthrough series like “Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” and “Super Mario Odyssey,” I also want to do more videogame challenges throughout the year.
One challenge I’m currently doing with a friend is a Pokémon Soul Link, also known as a two-player Nuzlocke. This is where the rules of Pokémon are no longer used upon fainting and limited chances to catch Pokémon to use are self-enforced.
Another challenge I plan to do is a speedrun of “Mario Party Superstars,” where I play through all the boards as fast as I can.
With the need for a clean slate after the last couple years, I hope to create content I can look back on and be happy to share with everyone.
Shaking off old habits to find inner peace
Aubrey Clarito, Contributor
Days leading to the new year keep all of us busy with preparations, family gatherings, and all the holiday fiascos. It is also time to reflect and look back on our lives throughout the previous year: seeing how far we’ve come, conquering our big and small battles, and recalling some life events we wished we could have done differently.
It’s a mixed emotion of saying goodbye and welcoming a new year, but it’s part of a clean slate moving forward to another chapter in this book called life. It’s time to set goals for the year ahead, and that’s where new year resolutions come in.
A new year’s resolution is an accumulation of life lessons, self-awareness, and determination to keep at it. It’s an easy task when you list the obvious ones like helping your parents do house chores or reducing time spent on social media because you spent half the day scrolling through Instagram after you said “only 10 more minutes.”
It’s hard to think of a resolution, you need to dig deep into your realizations from the past year. But it’s rewarding and fulfilling when you get it done.
My resolution this year comes from a point of reflection: to let go of the reins a little bit and keep my peace. If things don’t go my way, I’ll take a moment to breathe and weigh if it’s worth my time and effort. There are many things out of my control, but the fear of failing sometimes overrules.
Stepping back a bit gave me a new perspective: that the only thing you can control in life is how you respond to it through your emotions, words, or actions. It’s hard to shake off old habits, but it’s a part of me that won’t fit into who I want to be in the years ahead.
Isn’t changing yourself for the better, no matter how hard it is, a worthwhile challenge? Although it seems too abstract and has no direct solution to it, a lot of things in life are simply like that — a complex series of decisions intertwined with each other.
But when you start intentionally improving yourself and making conscious decisions, everything seems to fall into place and you feel this stillness and quietness amid the storm of thoughts or heartbreaks you face from the people around you.
Of course, it’s not going to be easy or straightforward. It’s a learning process of realizations, breakdowns, doubts, joys, and the in-betweens. Easier said than done, but it’s part of being human. Set those goals, big or small.
So, whatever you put on your new year’s resolution for 2023 and the coming years, make sure it’s something you can be content with and proud of one day.
