One Week Into the New Year

We’re officially one week into the year which I noticed because I’ve arbitrarily decided this day marks the end of starting conversations with “happy new year.” The first Wednesday of the year. One week gone in a zip. I find myself caught between fizzling reflections and forward optimism eager to ride the energy that the fresh calendar gives me for as long as I can. 

I did not hit my reading goal last year. I did hit my race goal (and then some!). I did not submit writing for publication in the ways that I wanted to. I did travel in both anticipated and beautifully unexpected ways. Some weeks my phone’s screen time was low (good thing). Sometimes my screen time was high (bad thing). I took a very real step closer to a lifelong dream. I did not open a travel credit card.

It is thinking about all these things that had me tear through my first book of the year on the second day of the year. And yet, hobbling through the end of a headcold, it took me seven days to get to my first run of 2026. Taking six days off did not mean I wouldn’t run in 2026 just as finishing one book does not a reading list complete. With this, I’ve been thinking of “starts.”

Somewhere in the self consciousness that is middle and high school, I remember once deciding I was going to make a New Year’s resolution against sweets. Nice in theory but completely impractical in implementation. I remember counting down to midnight in my friend’s basement, snacking on a spread of leftover Christmas cookies and puppy chow and telling myself that after the ball dropped, I would be sugar free. 

Of course when that didn’t last longer than it took Frank Sinatra to sing New York, New York, I decided it must be a thing for next year. 

The entire scenario feels so ridiculous to write and yet the same brain that is typing these words is the one that told my younger self that a thing must be perfect… a thing must be done flawlessly without any mistakes or misses to be true, to be correct, to be worth it.

So what happens if you miss January 1? What if your holidays were frenetic? What if you’re only now taking a moment to sit in quiet reflection… to think of how the year went… to really consider what you want the next one to look like? Surely there is still time for that.

One year, I wanted to participate in a global writing challenge called NaNoWriMo (short for National Novel Writing Month). The “event” is held annually in November, and I made the decision in October, calculating how many words I’d need to write a day to hit the 50,000 word goal we all agreed to (1,667). 

I didn’t start the first day of November. I didn’t start the second. I didn’t even start the third.

I started the fifteenth. 

3,333 words per day. Logic may have said to try again next year. But I said I was going to write a novel in November. And my word has to mean something.

Every day after work, I’d go to the Whole Foods by my office. I’d buy a $1 cookie, sit by the windows, and alternate nibbles and typing until I ran out of cookie and hit my word count. And—while it’s not being shortlisted for Book of the Year—I wrote my novel in November. 

As a younger child, I have a memory of starting a television movie at home. I don’t recall the movie or even who I was with, but I remember we turned it on five minutes after it started. Surely, we’d missed nothing. Surely, we could just watch it. But so convinced was I that something had happened in those first five minutes that would be crucial information for the ending and I simply couldn’t, in good faith, watch the movie. We’d have to try again next time it was on the television.

Fortunately, or not, our life is not a movie. There is no chance it’s going to play again. If you feel you’ve started late the best thing to do is not start later. The best thing to do is start. Start now. Start messy. Start unprepared. Start shy. 

Start nervous and doubtful. Start loud. Start unafraid to make mistakes and start eager to learn from them. Start because you can’t rewind on the televisions my generation grew up with and start because you can change your life with the 359 days left in the year. Start because you only need 1. One day repeated over and over and—

When you start may matter, but there’s something that matters more. 

That you start.