It's the end of 2018. Let's be honest, we thought it would never come. This past year has been a turbulent one within our county, and I'm sure a lot of people are ready to see it go. Permanently. And I think the New Year is always a good time to reflect and think about what we want to change as a society. How can we be better? What can we do differently? What will bring us closer together after a year that seemed to do nothing but tear people apart?

But why does thought process of change have to extend to EVERY aspect of our lives? Sure we can always be better, but that doesn't mean we need to talk about the New Year holiday as a time of completely revamping ourselves. When did this holiday become so negative about the previous year that we can't even think about the things that we did well? Just because society was a mess this past year doesn't inherently mean that our personal lives were.

If you want to take the New Year date on the calendar to use as a goal to make a personal change, then more power to you. But count me out. I'm not going to make some kind of pretense that I was the perfect human being in 2018. That would be 1) wrong and 2) hypocritical and 3) definitely wrong. Nobody's perfect. *Cue Hannah Montana Music* But I did some good things this past year, and I'm going to give myself some credit for it. And you should too.

I highly doubt that you went through 2018 as a complete failure. There had to be some positives that made your past year successful. Celebrate them! Don't get so caught up in "I could have done this better" or "I'm going to change that" language and forget how *awesome* you are! There's room for improvement, definitely. Anyone who thinks they're above improvement is kidding themselves. But as important as it is to learn from the past, we need to celebrate the past victories too, not get so caught up in negative rhetoric about the past year that we forget that we did *good* things, too.

Maybe you brought your grades up from the past year. I'm sure you're thinking about new study methods to bring them up even higher, and that's great. Always aim for improvement. But you *did* bring your grades up from previously! Celebrate that! Be proud of that achievement, instead of only thinking about what you could do to be even better. If you don't give yourself some credit, what's the point in doing all the hard work in the first place?

So this New Year, I'm not going to try to make a new me. The old me is pretty good, and I'm going to work to improve to make the old me great. I don't need to completely change myself to reach my goals for 2019, and neither do you. Don't change who you are, being the best version of who you are to mold that past into who you want to be. *You* have so much experience, life, love, and ambition that you shouldn't forsake that (or even use language that does) in the New Year as you work towards your goals. Celebrate where you were, take the old you, keep it close, and take the new experiences and new mindsets to get where you want to go.