Goodbye 2012, and Greetings '13

I am sat in the dark of my room at 7 AM, on New Year's Eve's Eve, listening to renditions of Auld Lang Syne on YouTube. New Year's is my favourite holiday of the year, above Christmas and all the others, because it actually symbolises something for me. I mean, naturally the flipping of man-made calenders doesn't literally represent some important change in the fabric of the universe, but it represents an important change in our man-made universe, which is just as, if not more, important. It's an unusual time of ubiquitous introspection, amongst even those who aren't usually into that sort of thing. People think about how their year went and what they will do to better themselves in the next year. People often take it trivially, but still, it's better than nothing, and I find it important. So, having said that, here's my New Year's moment of self-reflection and forward-looking:

2012 was certainly a dynamic year for me, but it was pretty terrible emotionally. The feelings I recall most strongly are firstly those of fear and stress with my university application in the first half of the year, secondly an annoyingly persistent feeling that I'm not close with anybody at all -- even my closest friends, and thirdly strong heartbreak and disappointments experienced in the first semester of university. Those are all the things I recall most prevalently, but I hope to think I've garnered some kind of improvement through such things. If I can summarise the main lesson I've learned from it all, I guess it would be not to worry myself extensively with expectations, which belong to the land of the imaginary, and to concern myself with the actual and the real, to love and experience what really happens, and to understand expectations as imagination and to not forget it. From this lesson, I can draw such plans of action as my equilibrium schedule, wherein I don't think about what I should be doing and fall into paralysis and procrastination about it, but instead I focus on what I can do and do it; I can appreciate the friends I do have and the friends I don't have instead of conjuring up expectations about extreme, Wildean social prowess -- I can instead turn away from the misleadings of imagination and turn into myself and begin to know myself and thereafter be myself; and the same goes for love: I can know that it is desirable and I can understand that I want it -- those are the realities, and those are important -- but at the same time I can disregard any expectation that I should have had love by now, and focus on the real and actual, to not let my imagination and expectational desires lead me astray and into heartbreak like it did in September/October.

And what of my resolutions for 2012? Did I meet them?

1. Pass my A Levels and get into a university of choice -- check! In fact, I got into my very top university of choice, and passed my A Levels with better grades than I expected, so this resolution was thoroughly resolved.
2. Complete the 50 book challenge -- failed. I've left my list in Edinburgh, but I think I read about 22 books this year, so I didn't even make half. This is largely down to my lack of time management and the surprising intensity of uni's first semester in terms of reading material, so while I have been reading, I haven't been reading for myself.
3. Finally finish a novel -- failed, although I have been writing more recently, and I like where it's going.
4. Establish a reasonable sleeping pattern -- this fluctuated, but during university semester time I want to say a kind of check! For a while I had a good system based on my timetable, and it worked for me, but it descended into chaos soon after. This receives a partial check, but is something that will be dealt with with my new equilibrium schedule, I hope.
5. Travel the UK -- I went to 2 places on my list of 9, and I told myself I would have considered 4 a success, but I didn't even achieve that, so a fail it is. In my defence, I have been busy, and one usually wants company when they travel, which is something I didn't have, nor did I have the motivation to do it alone.

That is one major success, one partial success, and 3 fails. I raise my hands and admit it, I failed, but I don't think I haven't improved as a person, which goes to show resolutions are simply guidelines.

Thinking of New Year's resolutions this year is more difficult because I have far less of a clue what 2013 has in store for me. I'll try all the same though, and I'll follow the same format of 5 or below, so as they're actually target-able.

1. I will finish either Matthew or Dean's story: I will not fall for the lush callings of other stories that spring to mind; I will complete one of the two, or I will write nothing. (Well, I'll restrict extra-Matthew/Dean writings to short stories).
2. I will follow my equilibrium schedule, making amendments to improve it as opposed to ever canning it all together.
3. As opposed to trying to complete the 50 book challenge, I'll try a different approach. I will do the 26 Reviews Challenge. This means I can read as much as I want, but I have to produce 26 reviews (informal personal responses) to 26 items of literature I read, which can range from academic essays to novels, etc. 26 because there are 26 fortnights in a year, so the target would be to do one every two weeks.
4. I will be ambitious. To operationalise this, I will say by the end of the year I should have 6 major (personal) things I can say I am proud to have achieved, so that is 1 for every two months. Doable, I think.
5. I will prize and focus on the real and the actual above imaginary expectations; I will repeat this like a mantra. Imagination helps for direction and guidance, but I have to remember that the here and the now is most important -- how am I maintaining the best reality possible, how am I dealing with it adequately; these considerations preclude pining over not meeting expectations. I'll sustain this belief, which to be frank I think is virtuous, throughout the entire year.

I'm hesitant about no. 3; to me it's the most radical of the ones I've listed, but I'll try it, I guess.

Here's to 2013, the year of mystery.