Failed New Year Traditions in 2022

Happy New Year!!!

I just had a revelation that I want to share with you. If you were raised like I was raised, then your final days of 2021 were filled with cleaning floors, dishes, and clothes to prepare for 2022. The old folks said a clean house would bring prosperity and good luck in the new year. Now, depending on where your families are from, you were probably supposed to have a spoonful of black-eyed peas, collard greens, or cabbage.

I can share that I didn’t do any of that this year. I’ll be honest, I was planning to take part in many of those traditions, but things just didn’t work out that way. This morning it hit me that I didn’t HAVE to do everything on my to-do list. While it would have been nice to wake up on January 1st to a clean house and perfectly organized home, it didn’t happen that way. I am choosing to focus on the fact that I am alive and healthy. Yet again, 2021 was a doozy, maybe not quite like 2020 but still much left to be desired. Today, as I cleaned my bathroom, I had a sense of peace. It could have been the cleaner fumes, but I still went with it. It was nice to be doing something I was okay with doing because wanting to clean feels like a stretch. It was still nice not feeling rushed or anxious about what would happen if I didn’t finish by some set date.

I will get to the point. It is okay to take your time because the list ain’t going nowhere! I will still clean and organize my space, even if it didn’t happen by New Year’s Day. I know how easy it is to work yourself up over some arbitrary deadline that doesn’t even mean anything to anybody…. but you. Go ahead and create that list, use it if it’s helpful (pitch it if it’s not), but don’t become consumed by it. If you need a break, take a break, and if you need to break things on your list up over hours….. or days, that’s your business and okay too. Give yourself permission to move at your own pace.