Resolutions
“No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again.” - Buddha
My favorite holiday has always been New Year’s Eve. I love the idea of turning the page and starting anew. I am a Virgo who is driven by goals and believes there are always ways to improve. More than anything, it is an excuse to dress up, make epic speeches, and drink champagne.
Over the past few years, I have started creating PowerPoint versions of my year-in-review. I track all the goals I previously set and try my best to celebrate every win, no matter how small. As I have gotten older, taking the time to honor the steps forward I am taking has gotten more challenging. If I don’t stop to look back at each area of my life, I won’t recognize the shifts that have occurred.
This tradition started a few years ago after I started doing Stand Up Comedy. I wanted a way to track how many shows I had booked and how my “comedy career” was progressing. From there, I branched out into all creative outlets, like writing and the coaching business I started a few years ago. I then tracked all the media/content I consumed, including a frightening amount of fantasy fairy-themed romance series over the past few years.
More than anything, this practice allows me the opportunity to go through all of my photos, notes on my phone, and social media to reflect on all that occurred in the past year. I know that I can’t capture all of it. Still, creating an online scrapbook allows me to hold onto as much as possible while heading toward a new beginning.
Plus, I barely drink anymore and like to be in bed by 10 p.m., so this helps me celebrate without necessarily having to be social—a.k.a. the dream scenario as I approach forty in a few years.
Throughout most of my twenties, my New Year’s Eve plans involved getting drunk with my friends, going to some club, and watching everyone around me kiss at midnight as I waited for it to “finally be my turn.” Nothing says starting the new year off right like drunkenly crying alone on a friend’s couch after spending the evening loudly exclaiming how much my life would change once the new year officially arrived.
My favorite was the year I proclaimed to my friends that I was finally done speaking to my ex, with whom I had spent the last half-decade in love. I had intentionally waited to say my goal last because, for a long time, I believed that public speeches were a great way to compete with other people. I wanted my speech to be the moment of the night. My words were met with rousing applause and a tear-filled speech from my best friend at the time. To them, it felt like a boundary and a turning of a corner that everyone had been waiting for.
Minutes later, after the clock struck zero, I snuck to the bathroom and left a voicemail on my ex’s phone telling him how much I still loved him. I then proceeded to re-enter the party as if nothing had happened and continued being celebrated by my friends.
It was like an episode of “True Life: I Am Living A Double Life” but was filled with my two favorite things at that stage in my life:
Getting Praise For Being Awesome
Making Toxic Choices
As French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
As I entered my thirties, I realized that changing to a new year could not only work to release all of the habits I had before but also to gaslight my friends into not having to take accountability for past actions. I loved telling everyone around me that I was suddenly a new person and that anything I did in the past was no longer a reflection of “my truth.”
It was a lot like the time as a teenager when my mother randomly went to church one Sunday and came home to declare to my sister and me that she had become “A full-blown Baptist.”
My New Year’s Gaslighting was most prominent at the beginning of 2019. I lived in Boston with two roommates and quickly told them how “2019 Clayton” was immediately different. No longer would I judge people or make fun of them behind their backs. In fact, every part of me had magically changed. I was kinder, more open, and more accepting of everyone around me.
Or at least that’s what I claimed. Every time they brought up stories from the past, I remarked that I barely even knew “2018 Clayton” anymore and how lucky they were to have witnessed such incredible growth.
Although it was in jest, I wanted to embody everything I was pretending to. I lived in a constant conflict between the person I knew myself to be inside and the ones I showed others.
One day in particular, my roommate came home excited to tell me how he pitched me to a guy he thought might be my type. When he retold the story, he described me as “sassy and would make fun of you until you questioned your entire life, but I was also really loyal.” It wasn’t exactly how I wanted to be portrayed to anyone, especially to a potential love interest, but the more sobering reality was that none of it was a lie.
Although my intentions were pure, the “2019 Clayton” charade lasted about two weeks until I was caught falling back into my old habits of tearing everyone around me down. My armor had been forged many years prior, and at that time, I had not experienced enough therapy, or life frankly, to learn how to put it down.
Still, it was joyful while it lasted, especially watching my roommates get increasingly exasperated as I continued to claim that I was different.
I have often thought of my life in terms of what I would name that specific chapter of my book. In this case, it would be “The Night I Changed Forever….well for 12 days at least.”
As I have grown older and experienced more loss, the ending of a year feels different and yet just as satisfying as it did when I celebrated it more outwardly. I find a lot more gratitude in the fact that I was lucky enough to see another year while simultaneously remarking to myself how time is an illusion because I live in Austin, Texas. I had to check off a box agreeing to that theory before they would give me my Driver’s License.
This past year was a rollercoaster but a really beautiful one. I experienced significant loss in my mother and my cat. I took significant steps forward in my creative and personal endeavors. I met stress with a lot more ease, joy with a lot more laughter, and the reflection in the mirror with a lot less judgment. Overall, I lived each day with far fewer expectations.
Most of all, I was lucky enough to spend time with everyone I love and tell them how much I care about them, especially over these past few weeks. As I head into this new year, I look forward to more presence. I aim to strive less for achievements and surrender more to what each moment brings.
My theme for the year is “Ownership.” I have been hesitant as I have started to put myself out there, especially through creative outlets like this one. I know I am allowed to take up space, but I still spend time at every turn making sure everyone else is aware of this fact and is okay with it.
I intend to write more, dance more, laugh more, cry more, and experience every part of myself without shame or resistance.
As I prepare to do my yearly PowerPoint, it is not lost on me that this Substack, and taking the next step in writing a book, will be one of my crowning achievements. I am eternally grateful to all who take the time to read these words. Time is precious, and in a world where everything around us is fighting for our attention, the fact that you give both is not lost on me.
I hope it was worth it, or at least that some part of it made you giggle.
Happy New Year.
With Love,
Clayton