New Year's resolutions come with a lot of excitement, but mainly I think they come with a lot of hype. There is undeniably a mental release surrounding the final days of December and first days of January each year in which I absolve all the chaos and crap of the previous year and look forward with blind hope to the possibilities of the future. As part of this ritual I, along with the majority of the world, commit to paper, social media and memory a vague and often lengthy list of resolutions to better myself and my environment within the new year.

Hence, my difficult relationship with resolutions ensues.

Don't get me wrong, the principle of setting resolutions is a good one, (if I did not think so, I wouldn't do it), but I think prescribing New Year's resolutions has become less about bettering myself and more about falling into a giant marketing and media ploy.

There is nothing special about the first of January.

It is a new year, but more importantly, it's a day like any other. Every day is an individual that only comes around once a year and any one of them may act as an adequate platform for change. In fact, if the change a resolution sets forward is important enough, why wait for Jan. 1 to bring it about? Amazon marketing activewear, fitness equipment and refillable water bottles should not spark in me the desire to lose weight, nor should the freak competitive drive that boils up from reading friend's resolutions on social media.

When setting New Year's resolutions, I always feel like I am making myself susceptible. Did I make this decision because it's something I truly want, or because it's something I'm supposed to want? It feels like the whole of society is talking about losing that "holiday weight" and "getting into shape." But is that something I want? Am I wanting it for the right reasons? And who gets to decide what the right reasons are? The only person I should be willing to make life changes for is myself. Amazon may sell the goods, my friends may act as motivation, but I am the only person that can fulfill that change.

And, really, the failure to achieve a resolution can be a step backward.

Blundering a resolution does not make me a failure. The fact I stepped forward, recognized something I want to change, and made honest attempts at righting it means I succeeded, but my successes are not always to scale with our ambitions. The unrealistic expectations often brought on at the face of a new year can equate to unattainable goals, leading to disappointment.

This is not to say I think failure should keep me from making the changes I want to see in my life, but that the societal notion of "New Year's resolutions" augments the pressure surrounding change. I have found I am far more likely to succeed in resolutions that I set throughout the year because they aren't tied with the highly marketable, yet not entirely practical idea of "time for a new year, time for a new you." Clearly, I am not the only one that has tried at the age-old resolution of weight loss or I wouldn't hear it across the media every year.

Still, sometimes I feel alone.

Consumer marketing and social media aside, writing New Year's resolutions can be a highly alienating experience. Sitting down to write a list on ways to better myself, depending on my mind frame, can easily transform into a list of things I don't like about myself. Truthfully, to understand the aspects I want to change I have to face what I do not like, but being confronted by a list can be mentally damaging. For people, such as myself, who suffer from body image issues, depression, and anxiety, resolutions can breed self-loathing. It falls back on the idea that change is scary. There's nothing like becoming anxiety-riddled and overwhelmed to squelch a year's progress.

Over the past years I've learned you don't need a new list, a new year, or a new you to be a better version of yourself, just the will to try.