A Taylor’s History of New Year’s Resolutions
Or: how I learned to weaponize my list-making and love the process
There’s something about me you should know: I am a skeptic and a critic and a hater.
I try not to be. I like to think of myself as a Pre-Raphaelite waif, just with a Playstation 5 and size 12 feet. My hair is long and unbound, my cheeks are rosy, I gaze upon the songbirds and the roses with eyes full of bright burning wonder at the sublime beauty of nature even as I gently succumb to the exquisite agony of whatever death is meant to signify the loss of innocence or morality or something, idk. I take photos of every pretty flower I see, I cry whenever I have any strong emotion, and I love my friends with the intensity of a military-grade laser. But I know, I know that at my core is a bonafide snoot.
Growing up in Silicon Valley, you learn how to see through the rhetoric of success pretty well. The tech propaganda is so strong, you’re raised to worship these tech CEOs, but you see the discrepancies all around you. You see the people scraping by on minimum wage in a city where the median house costs over a million dollars. You see the adults around you working crazy hours for unreasonable companies. You see the landscape change and the values shift as the new big groundbreaking start-up builds a new high-rise or pilots their new “revolutionary” service app. I’m also lucky to have been surrounded by adults who didn’t push me into the overachiever rat race of Bay Area public schools, and also in their own lives had taken alternative paths and pursued interests beyond conventional success. Also, I was raised atheist.
All of this is to say that I’ve never been a fan of new year’s resolutions. I understand that the new year is an arbitrary concept made up by humans; the world doesn’t reset just because the Gregorian calendar changes. Of course, I do have the capability to understand symbolism and signifiers — I read Derrida in grad school — so I recognize that there’s value in people telling themselves that the new year is a fresh start and that they can try things without feeling shame about the year before. But I also feel like people put too much stock in the wrong things. It’s all about productivity or career growth or other societally conventional markers of “success.” And a lot of them are focused on the end goal — the weight lost, the amount of money side-hustled, the engagement ring even though you’ve just started dating your partner — rather than the enjoyment and the beauty of pursuing that goal.
Working at a bookstore for a long time, I saw a lot of self-improvement trends rise and fall. I’ve seen the rise of tarot and crystals with the new age set. I’ve seen waves of people rediscover The Secret over and over. Coloring books were the big thing to improve mental clarity and inner peace when I started working there in 2015. We had several full tables filled with stacks of adult coloring books in addition to an entire aisle of bays. When I left in 2022, the section was down to just a shelf or so. I’ve seen the #Girlbosses (before and after the sexual harassment lawsuit) and the Girl Wash Your Faces. I’ve seen the Petersons and the Gogginseseses tell men to make their beds again and again. I’ve seen the undulations of every new results-guaranteed diet, from paleo to keto to Mediterranean to whatever “pegan” is (I used to love to tell new booksellers that it was a diet where you only ate pegasuses, even when they stopped finding it funny.) I’ve sold so many copies of Atomic Habits to people that the cover is seared into my retinas and I see it when I close my eyes to sleep at night. I’m not saying that all of these are the same. Some are genuinely helpful! But some are scams preying on people’s need for structure and easy answers. And sure enough, every January, we’d have hordes of people coming in and buying Marie Kondo and Robert Greene (the angel and devil on my shoulder, by the way) with a sort of weary hope. It’s an interesting phenomenon, is all I’m saying. And it’s easy to be critical of it when you’re seeing the industry churn out bestseller after bestseller.
In short, I’ve rebelled against the thought of starting the new year with a plan to better myself for a very long time. I don’t want to have to better myself! I can barely take care of myself as I am, what do you mean I should be getting ripped by December 31st? But then I realized two things:
Resolutions don’t and perhaps shouldn’t be about tangible end results or even about improvement at all. They can be silly goofy little side missions to help the year pass more joyfully. A resolution can be to eat as many new pasta shapes as possible, or learn how to do the Charleston for the hell of it. Life is short, it is random, why not have fun with it?
Making resolutions means you get to makes lists :)))))))
I love lists. I’ve got lists everywhere. The best part of grad school was maintaining lists of assignments and deadlines and the like. My first semester, I was working full-time and taking a maximum course load, and I had three different to-do lists to help me stay on top of it all. It nearly killed me, but boy howdy did I love the lists. My phone’s notes app is full of lists. Here’s one now!
List of Lists on Taylor’s Notes App (Incomplete):
My favorite songs of every year from 2017-2020
Fairy tale retelling novels categorized by quality of the retelling
Topics for essays I’ll probably never write
Books I read and liked in 2023
nice things my partner has said to me in passing that I want to remember
A list of phrases to describe myself (“an impish little scamp”, “a dog resting its head on its owner’s lap, looking up at them with teardrop-shaped eyes of adoration”, “sleepy”)
a list of every person I’ve ever been on a date with
things my friend James said at the Railway Museum when we went in January
Anyway, I realized this, and I began to dabble in some resolution-making. The year after, I made a few more. And then a few more the year after that. And it turns out that when I’m doing it in a way that’s fun and flirty and fresh, I kind of like it. So now that we are a third of the way through 2025, I wanted to look back at my resolutions of the past few years, and check in on how we’re doing for this year.
TAYLOR’S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2022
Much of 2022 was spent moving to Japan and settling in and breaking out into various patches of stress eczema. But I had one big goal for the year:
See Ebichu as much as possible before Hinata’s graduation
My kami-oshi, Hinata, graduated at the end of 2022. I had already been thinking of making the move to Tokyo when she announced it, but it really lit a fire under me to make it happen and make the most of my time when I arrived. I think I saw Ebichu perform four times between July and December 2022 — saw their two-man concert with Okazaki Taiiku in July, then their Chuon concert in the mountains in September, then Hinata’s solo concert in November, and then finally the big graduation in December. I really got my money’s worth from my fanclub membership.
Verdict: Big success
TAYLOR’S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2023
Okay, so I saw a lot of Ebichu in 2022. Maybe goals aren’t so bad. I decided to stick with the stuff I knew, but threw in something a bit more serious.
See all of the Hello! Project groups in concert
I had seen Juice=Juice in 2022, but Ebichu had gotten my focus. Now that Hinata was out of Ebichu and my interest was waning, I focused on my beloved Hello! Project groups. I saw Juice=Juice and ANGERME during their spring tour, then Tsubaki Factory during their fall tour. I saw Morning Musume’s 25th anniversary show at Budokan in June. I didn’t see a BEYOOOOONDS solo concert, but I did see them perform at Hina-Fes with all of the other groups together, so I’m counting it.
Verdict: Success! Maybe. Probably? Don’t disqualify me because I’m including Biyo on a technicality.
Pass JLPT N2
I first took the Japanese Language Proficiency Test when I was in college, back in 2012. I passed N3 — the middle level — with little difficulty. I planned on taking the next level, N2, the following year. I registered, did all of the online sign-ups, and then procrastinated when it came to paying the registration fee at the konbini, and the deadline passed. And then I stopped studying Japanese because my university didn’t have any more regular Japanese classes, and then I moved back to the US, and an entire decade passed. It was incredibly ambitious to think that I could pass without proper study. My Japanese was so so so rusty, and even after being back in Japan for a year, I wasn’t getting a ton of practice. It’s easy to skate by in Tokyo with English and some everyday conversational Japanese. But N2 is considered business-level Japanese, the level you’d need to get by in a Japanese-speaking workplace, so it opens a lot of doors career-wise and was my ticket out of English teaching. So I bought some self-study books, studied every day for two weeks, decided I hated studying and didn’t want to do it anymore, and started a new playthrough of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I showed up to that test absolutely just hoping that the stuff I’d picked up through osmosis would be on the exam.
I passed by the skin of my teeth. Two points over the minimum passing score. But a pass is a pass, and they can’t take that certificate away from me. Not without a fight.
Verdict: Miraculously, a success.
TAYLOR’S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2024
After spending way too much money on concerts the last two years, I decided to broaden my resolutionary horizons. I decided to focus more on raising up my own self-confidence and pushing myself out of my comfort zone now that I was settled into my life and my job.
Get my ears pierced
I first got my ears pierced at Claire’s when I was ten years old, as is traditional for suburban white girls in the early 2000s. It was a disaster. I changed my piercings too early, immediately tried to wear cheap Neopets earrings from Limited Too. After a year of irritation, allergic reactions, and pain, I let them close up. In my mid-twenties, as my peers were getting married and having kids and adopting dogs, I decided that I was finally responsible enough to take care of some piercings of my very own. So I got my lobes repierced. But I couldn’t let go of my teenage fantasy of having just a row of lobe piercings — plus the accessorizing potential of mixing-and-matching — so in September, I took myself to Harajuku and had a nice Brazilian man punch third and fourth holes into my ears. (Wait, do you count ear canals as holes? Should it be fifth and sixth? I’m not sure. Someone get the science community in here.) One of them did get infected, and I did have to take the train for like an hour to Tokyo Station to find an English-speaking clinic open on a Saturday night just to be looked at skeptically by an old Japanese doctor who couldn’t understand why I didn’t just take the piercing out (it was healing!!!!! I paid 10,000 yen for that infected, disgusting open wound!!!) but it was absolutely worth it to become 3% hotter.
Verdict: Big success, hell yeah
Take Japanese conversation lessons
Okay, so I passed the JLPT. But a funny thing is that JLPT does not test your speaking abilities, just reading and listening and multiple choice vocabulary selection skills. So on paper, I had passed the second-highest level of the big Japanese proficiency test, but I could barely string together a coherent sentence when speaking. Before I look for another job, I should probably get that sorted, right? So I decided to take Japanese conversation lessons, just to get comfortable speaking and thinking in Japanese again. I even signed up for a level check with one school! But then my best friend was coming to stay with me the week after, and I was overwhelmed, and I decided it wasn’t the best time to start, so I canceled my appointment. I fully intended on rescheduling once things calmed down, but when that time came, I decided that a better use of my time and money would be to start getting my leg hair lasered off every month. Whoops.
Verdict: lol
Go on five (5) dates
Listen, I got my heart broken years ago, and then a big pandemic happened and everything closed and you had to mask and socially distance, and then I moved to a different country and furnish an apartment, so it had been a long time since I’d last been on a date, all right? I’m not proud of it. I mean, I’d download the apps, I’d match with some people, make some soul-numbing smalltalk, and then I’d delete the app for another six months. But I decided that it was time for me to (ew) “put myself out there” and I made a real effort for the first time in years. Five dates seemed reasonable to me, a nice easy transition from spinsterhood to Bumble drone (this is a bee joke.) I did go on five dates — actually, many more than that, including three first dates in one week, which was a big fat mistake oh my god — and lost my absolute mind. My emotional state hit some black ice and spun out across ten highway lanes before crashing upside-down into a snowdrift. I cried like I’ve never cried before. I looked at the moon more than is recommended by health professionals. I turned manic rumination into an art form. But then I took a step back, touched grass, reconnected with myself and my friends, had a very lovely autumn season, and ended up meeting someone and falling wildly in love by Christmas, so it all worked out in the end~*~*~
Verdict: Success, but At What Cost
TAYLOR’S RESOLUTIONS OF 2025
So now we reach this year. I felt pretty good about last year, so I made my list longer and focused on a lot of things I’d been putting off. Basically, I wanted to pick up some new skills, rediscover the things I love, try new things, that sort of thing.
And then my job informed me in February that they weren’t going to renew my contract at the end of March, so now I’m unemployed. So.
We’re halfway through April, and a lot of my goals have been put on pause because I’m on a tight budget, but let’s check in anyway.
Write more, at least once a week
I haven’t written much at all the past few years. I had a huge creative spark during lockdown, and since then, it’s been a steady decline. I didn’t write any fiction at all in 2024. Yikes.
Verdict: This is the first proper thing I’ve written this year so far, so.
Find a cheap bass guitar
The concept of being a Hot Girl Who Plays Bass has haunted me for years. I’ve always liked bass guitars; I’m a big human being, on the grand scale of sizes that human beings tend to be, so I’m naturally attracted to things with Substance. I love cellos and hate the sound of violins. I think dogs should also be horses. I never understood the complaint about smartphones being too big, I don’t care about pockets, I’m a bisexual woman with a fake septum ring from a liberal coastal city, I’ll just drop it in my big Barnes & Noble tote bag that I use as a purse. I’m obsessed with a good, deep, funky bass line, and every TikTok of Victoria De Angelis the algorithm tossed my sapphic way would send me googling cheap bass guitars and also how to style my bangs better. I’ve had a lot of bad experience trying new hobbies and giving up once I’m not immediately proficient at it, especially when it comes to me teaching myself how to play instruments (see: me trying to learn guitar, piano, and autoharp) but I was gonna do it. This was gonna be the year.
Verdict: No bass category in my budgeting app :(((((
Take Japanese conversation lessons (again)
Chagrined by my failure in 2024, I decided that I was going to postpone my plans to get a new job by one more year and spend 2025 brushing up on Japanese and saving money. Of course, fate had other plans, so I am now jobless without having saved much or having gained confidence in my Japanese skills. Life is just zany like that.
Verdict: A funny thing is, most of my job hunting has been in Japanese. And not just regular Japanese, but full-blown keigo-filled business Japanese. It takes me 20 minutes to craft a single email because I have to google which specific phrases I should be using. The first recruiter meeting I had in Japanese, it was so terrible that she switched to English halfway through. Deeply humiliating. Next phone screening, I was coherent, but I didn’t make it to the actual interviews. But last week I had three meetings with recruiters, including a practice interview, and I was actually able to speak decently? It gets easier each time, and I can feel my speaking skills gradually come back. So maybe getting tossed into the deep end of the pool screaming and crying is better than weekly conversation lessons??? Should I cross this one off the list???
Eat at more new restaurants
Despite having lived in Tokyo for about seven years total, I haven’t been to many restaurants outside of the cheap chains. It’s hard! There are so many options, it’s sort of overwhelming, and it’s just easier to find a chain you know and can predict. I’m really watching my food budget, so I haven’t been doing this one in earnest yet, but I have been looking for opportunities as I can. I’ve been to a few new places with my partner, like the omurice shop by my apartment that opened last year and Wendy’s? I’ve never been to Wendy’s in Japan before, but we went last week (It was okay.) And two of my former adult students took me to a really nice izakaya the other night, so I’ve been finding ways.
Verdict: Looking good!
Get the big closet organized with actual shelves and things
I don’t want to talk about the big closet. I know I have no job and therefore plenty of time to get some tubs from Daiso and wrangle the horrors within, but I’ve been kinda depressed and overwhelmed lately??? Let’s forget I mentioned the big closet.
Verdict: hrrrrRRRRRRrrrGGGHHHhh no
Buy a chair for the balcony!!!
I did it. I bought a chair for the balcony back in January! It is wood and has four legs and you can sit on it. I was so excited to sit on my balcony once the weather got warmer, but then immediately after I bought the chair, they CHOPPED DOWN THE BIG BEAUTIFUL TREE THAT CREATED A PERFECT PRIVACY SCREEN FOR ME TO SIT AND DRINK STRAWBERRY FLAVORED SOJU ON MY BALCONY IN PEACEFUL ANONYMITY so now everyone can see me and I hate that, but I have in fact bought the chair for the balcony.
Verdict: yeahh boy
IN CONCLUSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe I should stop being a hater. Maybe resolutions and goal-setting and personal growth are nice. But I still stand by my belief that a good resolution should be about the process. I bought the Balcony Chair not to flex to society and The Boys that I have Balcony Chair money, but because it’s nice to sit on the balcony and listen to Mitski and look at the moon, and also it’s nice to go to Ikea and pick out the Balcony Chair and try out all the options even though you’ll probably get the cheapest one. It’s also nice to make lists. This whole post is just one big list, isn’t it? 0Life is full of splendor.