Tag: New Year

The Rites of December

At the beginning of every year, I write a big list of the things I want to do that year. I’ve done this for the last few years now, and it’s a great way of keeping those things at the front of your mind throughout the year – I look back at it all the time.

Note that it is not a to-do list. These are not things that I have to do by the end of the year, and they don’t necessarily roll over into the next year if I don’t do them. It is simply a list of things I want to do – an intention list. (It’s a concept I want to explain more in another post or video.)

Inevitably, there are some things on the list each year that I don’t get round to – I’m just focusing on other things, and they get pushed to the back of the queue. What I want to do this year – and in subsequent years – is to make December the month of doing things that I haven’t gotten round to all year. All those things on the list for the year that I haven’t done yet I want to do in December.

Of course, there’s a good chance I won’t be able to do all of them. Some of them are quite big projects – far too much to do in one twelfth of the year – but that’s fine. To complement my New Year’s Day Tradition, and to give the year a sense of completion, for me, December is about finishing things off.

A New Year’s Day Tradition

Over the last five years or so I have gradually developed a number of my own traditions around Yule and the new year. One of these is that on New Year’s Day I try to do lots of the activities that I want to do throughout the year. If I want to do lots of writing that year, then I do some writing on New Year’s Day. If I want to make lots of videos for my YouTube channel that year, then I do something related to making videos on New Year’s Day (it doesn’t have to be actually recording a video – I could just do something that’s useful generally, like learning more about how to light videos).

Now this isn’t about New Year’s resolutions – I don’t do New Year’s resolutions (because I think if a resolution is worth making then it’s worth making at whatever time of year you happen to think about it). This tradition isn’t about getting a head-start on New Year’s resolutions. Instead it’s just about having a good start to the year. If I want to do lots of writing in a given year, then if I do lots of writing on the first day of the year, by the end of the first day the year’s going very well – 100% of it was spent doing the things that I wanted to do.

This tradition is about making the first day of the year the example day for the rest of the year. If all the days can be like the first day, then it will be a good year. My aim on this New Year’s Day is to do a lot of reading, and maybe go through a lot of my old writing notes and scan in anything that only exists in paper form.