Luck Favors the Prepared
planning out the year as someone who gets overwhelmed planning out the year
It’s the first day of 2025 and I have been lying on the couch since I got up at 11. Last night SM and I went with K & L to a JCPenney photo-shoot-themed party. We haven’t gone out to celebrate New Year’s in years, all of our other friends live elsewhere and we’re never in the same place. This year however it was fun to be able to have friends to do something with. All this to say, we were out later than usual and I guess lying on the couch isn’t the most productive way to start the new year, but also it’s okay because I need the rest (I’m reminding myself). I’m wrapped in a grey cashmere blanket SM’s aunt gifted us and my bones feel exhausted from the migraine meds that I took this morning. I keep drifting in and out of sleep. On the coffee table in front of me, there’s a half full cup of Lady Grey tea in a Quimper mug (I adore Quimper pottery), some water that I should drink, a book that I was hoping to read, and on the TV there’s a YouTube video playing generic jazz with an AI generated visual of a cozy wintery coffeeshop that if you actually look at doesn’t quite make sense (why does the chair blend into the fireplace, why is there a piece of cake on two sheets of paper, what is a coffee couner? The mind reels). I’m telling you this so you can feel like you’re with me.
I’m prepared for the new year though, at least more than usual. This is new for me. In the past, when I felt extremely lost and trapped in my OCD, I never worried about New Year’s. I figured what’s the point of setting goals if I knew my OCD would prevent me from doing them. Since I finally figured out what I wanted to do in 2022 (if you’re feeling lost, I promise you’ll figure it out!), I’ve felt this pressure around the new year to establish goals, make a mood board and plan out the year. It is helpful, luck favors the prepared after all, but a lot of the pressure comes from seeing other people planning out their years on TikTok. I don’t often get FOMO (I don’t even like writing the acronym), but something about everyone else planning their year makes me feel like I should do it too. People get really excited about it too, and it’s kind of annoying, but there’s also this energy of new starts that I feel like I need to take advantage of.
I find it overwhelming to think about what I want though, so I used chatGPT (and people’s prompts from TikTok) to help me figure out what I wanted for the year. It was actually really helpful and kind of fun. From there, I made a mood board using the collage feature on Pinterest and then set it as the background of my phone because I guess a regular visual reminder of your goals subtly influences your daily choices and actions toward achieving them. That’s what I read anyways. To keep up with it, my friend L and I are going to meet at the end of each month to check in on our goals. I’m really excited about the goal check in part because I have this dream of being the type of person who sets goals at the beginning of each month and then meets with a friend to check in on them.
One of my goals is to stop second guessing my writing by questioning if anyone cares what I have to say. I need to let that thought process go, it’s not useful or kind. It’s silly but I feel OCD even telling you about it, like now that I brought it up, you will be like, wait, maybe I don’t care what she has to say! But hypothetical you is wrong and not real! It’s a journey. I’ll let you know how it goes.
One final thought:
✍🏻✍🏻✍🏻
(proud of u! happy 2025!)