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Some people are hesitant about what 2025 has to offer, accepting it like an ugly butter dish you’re never going to use. Is it me or for the last five years, did we expect each year to suck and were unpleasantly surprised when it did? Our assignment here at The Prompt was “Let’s Look Forward, I Guess,” showcasing our hesitancy to step outside, since everything will violate our rights, take our parking spot, and vilify our Starbucks order.
Not me. Check this out…
I pledge to not allow 2025 to suck.
There, I said it. Now what?
This isn’t about you. It’s not about him or them, nor is this about the seven other things you think I have going on in my life. This is my simple declaration to the world that next year won’t be bad. I said it, so it must be true. After all, everything you read on the internet is true, right?
In order to not let the year suck like 2020-2024, you gotta subvert it. Come at it from a different angle. This is no regular year. It’s the 25th anniversary of Y2K. If we can survive that, we can survive anything.
Don’t wait for January 1st.
Sure, 1/1/25 is a nice round beginning, a clean slate, a fresh new calendar on the wall with no markings yet. So why must we wait till the tremendous annual New Year’s individual renaissance? Newsflash, my peoples… every month, week, day, hour, and second there is a do-over. It’s up to you to determine when it starts. Not the calendar, not the Verizon cell towers—you. Here, watch this…
I’ve decided things’ll be better starting now… Now… nnnnnnnnnnnNOW. Did it work?
Don’t let the Gregorian calendar determine your fate. It starts when you say so.
It’s Goals and Resolutions time.
If you do New Year’s Resolutions every year, they likely look like this:
I will (verb-noun) in 2025.
I will not (verb-noun) in 2025.
I will (verb-number-plural noun) in 2025.
I will not (verb-number-plural noun) in 2025.
There’s no right or wrong with these. Only you know what your personal measuring stick is. Everyone who participates can Mad Lib your way into 2025 any old way you’d like.
I will represent blenders in 2025.
I will not kick 47 billion spatulas in 2025.
Studies show that most New Year’s Resolutions fail within the first two weeks. To them, I say, “HAH! I only waited a day to blow my list last year! You suckers aren’t trying hard enough!”
Regardless of how you design your personal plan, you know and I know the annual ones won’t last, so save your drama for your mama and shift your focus.
(Said with a Droopy Dog voice) “But Jay, what about the upcoming thing, the destruction of our things, or the fact that I can’t seem to accomplish the thing?”
That’s a great story, Jethro. Keep reading.
You can do 2025 with a macro lens or a microlens.
Instead of documenting rules to determine my behavior and habits for the next 365+ days, I will write a daily set of rules. That doesn’t mean I’ll have 1,095 daily rules piled up behind me by year’s end. I’m allowed to carry some rules over from one day to another. I could even write the same three rules every day for a year. If they’re good and have worked before, they can work again.
Not every day is the same. Flexibility is your friend. If you pledge to give up smoking on January 1st, and you wake up on August 15th knowing it’s going to be a bad day and a cigarette is the only way to let you cope, I say smoke ’em if you got ’em. BUT… you know the risks going in, and the only one to blame is yourself.
If you adhere to one lesson from Atomic Habits by James Clear, it’s this one: You can’t stop a habit cold turkey. It needs to be replaced with a different habit. Maybe that bad day will go over better because instead of lighting up, you’ll eat a piece of fruit when you’re stressed. (Obviously, I have never had a smoking habit because that screaming you hear is a battalion of smokers criticizing my comparison of a good cigarette to a sour clementine.)
Tomorrow is going to happen, whether you like it or not.
Let’s face it, my pledge to not allow 2025 to not suck is about as reliable as a check engine light. I don’t know how things will look in twelve months or twelve minutes. All I know is tomorrow is just a few hours away, and it’s the best do-over there is.
The day after the November election, my rabbi posted a fantastic sunrise picture on Facebook and captioned it, “Still, the sun came up.” Months later, it continues to bring tears to my eyes. Every morning is a new opportunity for you. Over the last twenty-plus years, when I was challenging myself to achieve professional and personal goals, my daily mantra was, and remains, “All my victories lie before me.” I hereby bequeath my mantra to you. All your victories are right in front of you for the taking. Whether you choose to claim them or not is entirely up to you.
Is the world going to end? Probably, but it won’t be because you didn’t double your annual Goodreads book count. As the year progresses, either look forward carefully and gracefully or with the attitude of a rabid honey badger. All I know is I’ll forgive you when you drop the ball as long as you rub some dirt on it and try again tomorrow, which is precisely when the next year begins.
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