2025-12-27

new year new me

The end of the year is a really funny time.

The slice of days between that huge Christmas feast and a few too many drinks on New Years Eve for all intents and purposes might as well not exist. Time isn't real.

However throughout the eating, drinking, beach days or snow ball fights there's this anxiety lying low beneath the surface. You're asking yourself, "What did I achieve this year? What am I going to do next year?". You're another year older, those eye bags are getting heavier and your favourite pair of jeans are tighter. It takes longer to wake up from the haze of sleep in the morning, it's harder to drift off into a peaceful rest at night.

new years resolutions

New year, new me.

As any (consistent) gym rat knows, January is the busiest month of the year. People enthusiastically sign up for discounted gym memberships in the first week of the new year, telling themselves that this is their year. This time it's different. With a quick swipe through the terms and conditions, twelve months of gym access has been approved and the monthly payments begin direct debiting out.

Week one is euphoria and muscle soreness. By week three, a late-running meeting becomes a convenient exit ramp. "I'll go tomorrow" is the most dangerous phrase in the English language because tomorrow is a seemingly infinite resource.

Until it isn't.

Now your favourite show as just released a new season, you want to binge that instead. This carries on with the occasional visit, excuse after excuse. Then suddenly, it's December. The RFID scanner at the gym hasn't seen your key tag since March. The franchisee is thankful for your $1,100 donation to their business this year.

"current_year+=1 is my year!"

accountability

I'm not making fun of people like this - the vast majority of people have this shortcoming. Myself included. It's not limited to just visiting a gym. I've done something similar more or less every single year since I was a teenager. One year it's journaling, the next it's LeetCode. Or maybe it's something inside the stack of books in my room giving me a judgemental look. This time, however, I come with the wisdom that only age can achieve. I'm still not very wise though.

Accountability is what keeps one motivated to achieve their goals. Whether that comes from within ("I want to buy a new widget"), from other people ("I want to buy the best widgets for my children") or somewhere else entirely ("I will donate widgets to the poor to make this world a better place"), it's the driving force behind most motivation. There are other names for it of course; duty, pride, customs, culture, shame, guilt, among others.

But it's all the same thing, really.

What I was lacking was accountability. I haven't succeeded yet, but I've successfully avoided failing. This year I've got my own list of resolutions, as is customary. Among them was learning some things outside of simple Python. That's partly why I started scrawling down my words for the world to see on a blog, I get some hands on experience using HTML and CSS.

Another is being accountable to the world reading this.

Hi, crawlers!

opportunity

"The best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago, and the second best time to plant a tree is now"

Every time I read this quote in the wild, it aggravates me unlike anything else. That fact doesn't make it any less correct.

I've been pretty lucky to be given the opportunity to study computer science. I've got a very supportive family, and I'm fortunate to have found something I enjoy so much. I've finished my first year of CS, so this is about the time where things move into second gear. I'm pumped.

It's silly to assume that an arbitrary change in dates means big changes to one's circumstances. But, if you're able to treat that change in date as a milestone, the compounding effects of new habits can mean enormous benefits over relatively short periods of time. Whilst unrealistic, being just 1% better every day results in being more than 37¹ times better by the end of year.

Take this as your opportunity. Find someone or something to keep you accountable. If that means uploading weekly shirts off selfies to Instagram, do it. If that means telling your partner and risking embarrassment from not keeping up, do it. Heck, just posting updates into the aether on X is fine. Anything similar to a git commit history will work.

This blog is my ledger. The cost of failing is public record.

- ouzo

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