Beginning Again

New Year’s is by far the most common day for a mental reset. The calendar begins again, so why shouldn’t we? We try to convince ourselves that the errors and setbacks of the past year are cosmically forgotten, the slate wiped clean, and that we can suddenly be whoever we want to be (which is certainly not who we were for the last 365 days, of course).

These moments litter our lives, because we are always looking for excuses to become self 2.0. Prototypes don’t work, right? There are always iterations. You learn from your mistakes. Etc.

Going to bed on the eves of these changes, we smile to sleep with perfect visions of ourselves in the eyes of others—how we will look, talk, carry ourselves. First days of school. Heading off to college. Moving to a new city. Starting a new job. The latter event horizon is where I find myself. So it’s time to decide once again who I am going to be.

Of course, we are always the same person we were yesterday and the day before. It depends entirely on how we want to present this self, and these life nexuses are moments in which we can decide the parts we want to let emerge victorious. What parts of ourselves we want to work on. What faults of our own we’d like to suppress (though, again, they will never really go away).

This moment in time is exciting, because, as the saying goes, it marks the beginning of the rest of my life. How do I make sure I step with confidence? First impressions leave lasting impressions, especially when the concrete is still drying. Even more so with new jobs, because I clearly sought this position and need to prove to many that I indeed deserve it.

My parents sent a picture in the family group chat the other day of the Little Miss book series on a rack in a store. I was thinking, that’s where I find myself right now. Standing in front of that rack, deciding what kind of person and employee I want to be for my manager, my team, and my company. Little Miss Helpful. Little Miss Kind. Little Miss Calm and Sure. Little Miss Bakes the Office Cookies. Little Miss Wears Only Black. Little Miss Time Management. Man, they wrote a lot of those books. Of course, until I become an anthropomorphic shape, I will likely be a combination of these Misses, and maybe even some Misses they didn’t want to publish.

So once in a while we find ourselves standing in front of this rack, picking a metaphorical literary gift to hand to someone who has not known us at all before tomorrow. It’s a lot of pressure to put on oneself. But I want to say it’s rightfully placed. Though we can never really change, we can push ourselves to excel in places we’ve struggled, and it helps to have a more concrete jumping off point for these efforts. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow all sound the same, so when tomorrow already promises to be different, it helps us cope with the idea that we might be different, too, if we try.

Let me be clear that I am not advocating for an utter and untrue transformation of oneself to please certain facets of society. Always. Be. Yourself. (See my last entry about dancing.) But a fresh slate exists because what was there before was not entirely satisfactory, and a fresh slate exists to be written on.

These are the moments in our lives that we get to rediscover why we seek these moments, what drives us to jump from comfort to uncertainty. This sounds heavy, but it is! Turning points signify that we’ve decided the status quo is no longer satisfying, and that can be scary. When I started my new job on Monday, I was excited, but I was also scared. Would they like me? Would I like them? Now, only time will tell. Happy trails!