New Year stopped being about New Things.

I think it started as I slowly kissed my twenties goodbye but, I know our culture has this fascination with the concept of “New Year, New Me”. and I will admit, I did subscribe to that way of thinking for most of my life. Which meant I was really setting myself up for failure when I decided to do something or stop something cold turkey, only to find myself crawling back to old habits, old me. Feeling like a failure because I couldn’t fulfill the goals I set for myself.

New Year, yes.

But really, I’m still just me.

As I find myself appreciating the year I’m inhabiting, the skin I’m living in and the age I am experiencing, I find myself changing my perspective on the New Year. Instead of “new, new, new”, I try to look back at the things, the moments and people— experiences and thoughts too— that made me feel in the previous year.

The events that left a mark. The people who really saw me. The moments where I struggled and recovered. Moments of rest that really helped me recuperate. And in that ritual of looking back, I slowly find myself tying my twenty twenty five to the first few days of twenty twenty six. Words like “integration”, and “continuity”, coming up more than a few times on my journals. And I feel like this year, twenty twenty six, I want to live not just with intention but with intention of continuity.

Not restarting.

Not changing. But tying ribbons for the victories I will be encountering— lessons, challenges and conquests, too— and have that anchor me as I move forward. Anticipation with the intention for the future, or something like that. I don’t really know how to make that sound smarter.

In the last days of twenty twenty five, in the woods of Nagano Prefecture, just by the pile of snow— with my friend and the moon as witness— I burned two pieces of paper. There I wrote the many things I used to believe about myself. Things I knew were true about me, once. Things I held onto out of the need for survival, out of fear. Baggage that was weighing me down.

My twenty twenty five had been such a transformative year for me.
It wasn’t easy. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

And in those moments of struggle and transformation, I saw the many faces I had to put on in order to arrive where I am. And I know deep inside, I did not need them all to continue although they were necessary for the moments that conjured them.

Writing them on paper, acknowledging them. Looking them in the eye.

Then burning them. Letting them go as I thank them.
They’re now ashes; but the lessons I keep. The intention I keep. I get to choose.

The pieces of me I get to carry as I step into my becoming. Maybe that’s what the New Year is all about, at least for me. Not changing myself. Not cosplaying as someone new. But stepping into the real version of me I used to hide away.

To allow myself the privilege of becoming.

To allow myself to continue with trust in the ribbons I’ve tied to get this far.