For what is possibly the first time in my life, I'm not excited to see a new year.

I feel like I did everything right to ring in the new year with friends and family. I huddled in the living room with my parents and siblings to watch the ball drop on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve. At exactly midnight, I exchanged all-caps "HAPPY NEW YEAR'S!" texts with all my friends.

I mean, I even went to bed at a decent hour and woke up early to clean up my bedroom and make breakfast for my little brother and sister. I began my year under a warm roof with loving family members and supportive friends. By all accounts, the year started on a good note.

And yet, through every part of the New Year's traditions, I felt off. I wasn't excited—or even happy—to begin 2019. So if you feel similarly, you're not alone.

While I wasn't at all bitter to see other people's excitement and their high hopes for 2019, it did sort of make me feel worse about my own lack thereof. Since midnight on January 1, I've just been asking myself: Why don't I feel any sort of excitement about the possibilities offered by the clean slate of a new year?

I feel like I've narrowed my own negative outlook down to nervousness about my future. Later this year I'll start my senior year of college, which sounds great, but is actually one of the most nerve-wracking things I've ever faced. It was one thing to think about graduation when I was a first-year with years of college left to go. Now, my adult life is staring me in the face and I've never felt less prepared in my life.

All of this is just to say that perhaps the reason we aren't excited has less to do with exterior concerns, and more to do with our own mindsets and how we deal with our problems.

Something I really started to focus on last year was my level of optimism in any situation. Ever since I was in middle school, my mom's been getting onto me for being a serial pessimist, and I wanted to try to fix that. While I wouldn't say I've been entirely successful in my mission to be optimistic, paying more attention to my attitude has been an enlightening experience.

What I think—and hope—is that consciously steering away from a bummed attitude will be a big part of the solution to my negative outlook on the new year. It might sound ridiculous, but maybe we are the only ones holding ourselves back as this new year begins. It may be cheesy and annoying to read this from literally everyone who lived to see January 1, but 2019 really can be full of possibilities for us all—even for those of us who welcomed the year with a bad mood.

You're by no means obligated to be cheery and mindlessly hopeful about what will come in 2019, but consciously reminding yourself that what you do is your own decision can make things easier. This can be a good year if we truly believe that we are capable of making it so.

Every year comes with its ups and downs. This year, no matter how many bad things we fear or expect, let's try to focus on and believe in the ups.