Can I be honest with you? The whole “New Year” mentality is enough to give me a nervous breakdown. There’s all these hopeful posts on instagram, facebook, blogs and pinterest: Start that diet, renovate your home, revamp your systems, rethink your methods, read the bible, and everything else. Honestly, I’m over here still trying to process 2015 and the what and how of everything that happened. And I know I can’t be the only one.

I know I can’t be the only one who feels completely behind the 8-ball when it comes to starting a new year. It’s the 8th of January and, other than the weather, I feel like it’s somehow already the middle of July. All the resolutions {which I don’t make} have gone out the window and we’re all fully entrenched in survival mode. {I hate survival mode}. I want to give up on 2016 and it’s just started.

The whole thing is ridiculous though and that’s what I will continue to tell myself. One, other peoples’ agendas can’t dictate to me how and what I should be doing. Two, who says that things have to change because it’s the new year or that they can’t change when it isn’t?!

As I’ve gotten older there are a few things I’ve learned: 1) if I don’t do something every day it doesn’t mean I’m a failure; 2) I can make changes whenever I want; and 3) I don’t HAVE to change anything, unless I want to. So…take a deep breath. Feel that freezing cold air right down to your toes. This is YOUR LIFE. It doesn’t have to be lived according to any specific structure, it doesn’t have to fall into the norms of the world.

You do you.