How my failures inspired my New Year's resolutions
failure or first go? you decide...
2024 was a real rollercoaster of a year. The kind where you cling onto the barrier and hope for dear life that you’re strapped in tight enough.
If you were around last January, you’ll remember how optimistically I started the year. I was buoyed by the things that tend to give us a boost in the gloomiest month of the year: the romantic notion of the turning of the page, a clean slate revealed and a rare opportunity to reflect and reassess.
Yet, days in, my best friend and Grandma-figure Norma passed away. Five months later, her gorgeous daughter, partner in crime and our other wonderful life-long friend Angie passed away too. With what felt like one swift blow, two fundamental pillars of my existence were gone.
In many ways, 2024 was the year of endings. Losing Angie and Norma, selling their house, completely changing our daily routines, our birthdays, Christmases. Moving out of our family home, going through all our stuff, getting rid of a lot of it and frantically finding a place for the rest of it.
It was one of those years where a lot of change happens to you, rather than by you, which meant I ended the year feeling as though I’d neglected and failed at a lot of what I set out to do.
As I’m prone to oversharing online, I don’t shy away from telling you about my shortcomings either - I find them so refreshing to share and read. It’s the comforting admission that no one is perfect, so no one expects you to be either.
If we’re honest, we also love to read about people’s failures. It humanises us all. Think of the wild success of Elizabeth’s Day How to Fail podcast (and her books). We all want to know that we’re not the only one slipping up, not doing the things we said we would, or doing them and realising it wasn’t worth it anyway.
That’s why failures, especially the ones we’ve culminated over the course of a year, are so helpful. Failures like rejections or mistakes have a funny way of nudging us back to ourselves. Away from the noise.
The things you didn’t do, the promises you didn’t keep are a good starting point as any to figure out what you do want. Those things you wrote down last January that you thought you wanted, do they matter now? Did you even want to do them in the first place? Or have they become more significant from this new perspective?
Personally, I feel like my biggest fails were:
Not prioritising my health. When I did work out, I loved it, but that didn’t make me motivated to do it consistently. I spent far too much time sitting at my desk, not leaving the house, and who knew, that was a recipe for feeling crap? Oh wait, we all did.
Not making enough time for my friends and family. Work consumed my life at points this year and I started a new relationship and had to learn how to split my time in a whole new way. The time with friends and family became smaller and I want more of it in 2025.
Not sorting my shit out. Finances (miscalculated my tax bill), pension, phone storage, laptop backup, old clothes, you name it, it isn’t sorted.
Not reading as much or doing things I enjoy for fun. Would not recommend.
Saying yes when I really wanted to say no. Boundaries? I don’t know her.
Not finishing my fiction novel. The excuses rolled of the tongue for this one, but the truth? I was distracted by other work and guilty of too much comparison and self-doubt.
Still emotional spending. De-influencing myself that I need more stuff (I don’t) and leaving the one-click away life remains an eternal goal of mine.
Not travelling as much as I planned & cancelling a big Canada trip. Sad, but the right move. I paid off my debt instead and got a chunk of money back as I cancelled early. Those mountains will still be there when I eventually make it, one day.
Most of these have become more important, though I’ve resided myself that ‘sort my shit out’ will be an ongoing process throughout the year… and all the years that follow. Travel is also a big one to revisit, but I have my eye on a staycation or two or long weekend in Europe, as saving is now a bigger priority.
If anything, I didn’t need to write resolutions this year, all my failures from 2025 have given me enough direction for this year. Read more, move more, see your pals, have more fun, go outdoors more, sort your pension, finances and systems out. Big clear out. Done.
Don’t get me wrong good, wonderful, wildly unexpected things still happened in 2024. A new relationship, friend’s weddings, a Christmas market, amazing writing opportunities, getting an agent, going to lots of cool events. It all co-exists, in the beautiful, painful contrast of life.
Last year passed in a haze, but I’m hopeful 2025 is one of joy, consistency, growth and intentional change. Here’s to that, eh?
This is encouraging, thank you for sharing about the regular human experience. I’ve often been swept up in sugar coating life and not admitting my failures, so this is really refreshing.☺️
Thank you so much for sharing and normalizing failures! It’s helpful to read about how people’s years really were and not just the highlights. I read this quote by Monica Heisey a month or so ago and it gave me so much comfort that a year can be all the things all at once ☺️
“turns our every year is very beautiful and silly and fun and strange and quite devastating and kind of boring and so, so exciting. this one was all of these and i bet the next one will be too, lucky us and oh no! 🦐” -Monica Heisey