In our teens, New Year’s didn’t really mean celebrating. There wasn’t much to do anyway when you were 14 or even 15.
It was simply the end of the year-end holidays and the start of a new academic year. A new school year, new classes, and maybe a few new best friends. January felt less like a fresh start and more like a reset back into routine.
Then things began to shift, usually around 18 or 19.
We weren’t fully grown yet, but we weren’t kids either. We were somewhere in between, standing on a bridge that didn’t quite feel steady. Some of us were starting college or university; others were figuring out what came next.
New Year’s suddenly felt exciting. It meant having an actual choice. You might even get a new outfit for it, because for the first time, you got to decide how to spend those hours between midnight and dawn. Staying up felt like absolute freedom!
Then came our early twenties, and New Year’s became even more… open.
It was all about New Year’s Eve plans, staying out really, really, really late, and counting down with people we might not even know that well. Midnight felt full of possibility, like you’d jump into a different body and come out a whole new person on the other side.
New Year’s felt so significant that if you started the year in the right place, with the right people, everything else might fall into place too.
Resolutions revolved around love, or at least not wasting time on the wrong person again.
There was a lot of excitement in those years, but also pressure. Pressure to maximise everything. The next few years. The next big move. Because nobody wants to be the 35-year-old still wearing leopard tights and hot shorts, right?
At some point though, the noise fades.
The overstimulating music quietens, and the urgency softens. When you reach your thirties and beyond, New Year’s slows down. You start to understand that failures are part of the process and that things don’t always work out, no matter how hard you try, and that’s okay.
Resolutions start to look different too because they’re no longer big declarations or doodle/sticker-filled bucket lists.
This New Year, we’re taking the public holiday off and actually resting, without spiralling about the workload waiting for us. We’re choosing slow moments with family, and we’re decluttering instead of buying into the year-end shopping fiesta, just to start the year feeling lighter.
We don’t rush into January the way we used to and we don’t expect the new year to fix everything the old one didn’t. We just want the year to feel manageable, for our ageing bodies and minds.
That’s the beauty of growing and experiencing the same things differently. They just show up in a new light.
From all of us here at Nuren 21, to you and yours – Happy New Year! May this year be exactly the version you want.