Welcome to the last week of the first month of 2017!

If you have kept your resolution till now, chances are you will keep it, as 3 weeks is long enough for new habits to form. If so, congratulations! My deepest sympathies for you.

If you didn’t keep your resolution, that’s okay. All you need is a new year to start over again.

As for me, I ditched the resolutions this year because I never made them.

Don’t get me wrong, I normally do. Read the bible from cover to cover. Go swimming three days a week. Read at least one, or sometimes two books a week. Eat healthier. Go to sleep at 9:30 pm. Use social media as a study reward. Play a few concerts on the violin.

I set up ideals, too. “Embrace pain.” “Process not product.” “Carpe diem.” “Make the devil afraid of you when your feet hit the floor each morning.” “Go placidly amid the noise and haste.” etc. Lots of that stuff.

Once I filled up a whole stack of index cards of virtues which were impossible to keep, at least not all at once. I can’t help but be that idealistic. But it’s better to shoot to high and eventually grow up to where you strive to be, right?

Resolutions are great. Goals are great. Especially if you set both “great” goals and “achievable” ones. Long term and short term.

But what if I wanted to use this year to tune in to myself and figure out what my ideals and habits should be? What if I just want to listen to my soul and hear what it wants? Listen to my body and take care of its needs? Adjusting and fine tuning my moral compass so that it can get drawn to where I was meant to go?

The above is what I posted on my Instagram on New Year’s Eve.

I still have no regrets in not making any resolutions this year. Besides, what I said earlier was wrong. If you didn’t make a resolution, you don’t have to wait until the new year. All you need is a Monday. Not even that, all you need is your decision now.

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets