I won’t be making New Year’s Resolutions on January 1. To be honest, I never have, but not because I’m against resolutions. It’s because for me a new year won’t begin on January 1. As long as I can remember, I’ve never marked new and old years by the Gregorian calendar. These twelve-month chunks don’t reflect my own endings and beginnings. Instead, I’ve always marked years by the academic calendar.

I count school years instead of Gregorian years because summers have always marked the major changes for me: every June I leave behind classes and teachers and prepare to meet new ones in August. Friends graduate and leave, relationships end, and the next school year offers new possibilities. The end of 2016 means nothing to me. It’s still winter, I’m still in grad school, I’m still 24. What will actually change tomorrow?

Now, while folks wallow in the regret of not fulfilling their 2016 resolutions, I still have six months left until I have to wallow in regret, and even then I have the whole summer to do my wallowing. I have plenty of time to not get in shape and not get published in The Paris Review.

I also have half a year left to finish my MA, improve my teaching, become a regular at a bar where everybody knows my name, and find inner peace. Piece of cake. Then, in summer, I can start the next year fresh and accomplished. I still don’t know where I’ll be next year, how many publications I’ll have, and whether or not I’ll have to cope with martial law, but that’s fine, because I still have half a year to figure it out.

For the rest of you folks celebrating 2017 like it somehow means something, I wish you a Happy New Year. For me, though, kindly hold your New Year’s wishes until summer. The weather will be nicer then, anyway.

Peace,

-jk