Ah, that time of year again. The time of tiresome Facebook statuses along the lines of ‘new year, new me’ and a timeline clogged with veracious memes of how you’re still going to be the same person you were yesterday so you should get over it.
My resolutions for 2016, like every year, are quite tame; one of them is being more mindful of my words. For instance, not describing situations as ‘lame’ when I know it’s offensive. Reduce the use of ‘like’ if I’m not using the word as a comparison. Also committing to fully thinking or feeling something – no more of this ‘sort of’ and ‘kind of’ nonsense. There’s also the usual hope of being more organised and procrastinating less.
I do have a few new resolutions in 2016; I pray my fellow PoC receive fewer microaggressions in life in general and have all of the liquid iron in the world to have the energy to educate people when it gets both mundane and exhausting from the frequency. I also hope God anoints me with edges this 2016 as I slather castor oil on my temples twice a day.
One cold winter morning at 6am on 20 January in BOXPARK, London – after a gruelling training session in the freezing cold with an Olympic athlete, a Nike Women PR person congratulated a hoard of sweaty women for surpassing the third-week-failure slump. I was one those women. She told us that it was usually around that time when people give up on their goals, as they’ve not lost a stone by 20 Jan, or they’ve had a few secret cigarettes here and there and haven’t checked in on their parents daily. It’s time to pack it in, maybe next year. Of course this isn’t the case.
We must remember to have positive goals rather than negative ones. We should want to do or achieve certain things to make an impact on our lives or the lives of others rather than stop doing things. Why will this year be different from the last? We need to put effort into our resolutions for them to succeed. This means being realistic and time-managing our goals and remembering accomplishment doesn’t happen just because one has good intentions; you’ve got to work for it.
Perhaps I’ll invest in a thesaurus and the next time I’m in a dire situation, I’ll have the vocabulary to use a better word. Perhaps the castor oil treatment will give me the sideburns of a ‘70s Stevie Wonder. Perhaps the microaggressions will decrease in time (well, that one is going to take more than a year) but all we can do is try. Have a crackin’ 2016, y’all.
#SELFCARESUNDAYS: how to ease yourself into freelancing as a creative
#SELFCARESUNDAYS: what it’s like to grieve for someone you’ve already lost
#SELFCARESUNDAYS: gal-dem on self-preservation and surviving the general election
#SELFCARESUNDAYS: 5 ways to break free from the multitasking monster
