Everyone says it: a new year is a chance to start all over again. But that’s the thing, you actually have to start all over again. The thought of that terrifies me. It makes me sit down and draft out to-do lists that wind up being the size of a family of nine’s grocery list. I become anxious over where the heck i’m supposed to start on all the things I want to change about my day-to-day life.

I just read off a riot act of New Year’s Resolutions: work out every day, cook myself dinner every night, mediate for 30 minutes, be a better friend, pay my bills on time, make enough money to pay my bills on time.

But now i’m sitting here calculating how much of this I can actually do in 24-hours and my head is spinning and my pillow is whispering sweet sweet things to me across the room and I want to throw all of these plans and work emails and credit card statements up in the air like I seriously don’t care.

Hi, 2015. It’s nice to meet you.

It’s nice to be 12 days into you – though I feel like I was way more “into” you when things felt like they were going south in 2014.

The first week back after the holiday vacation is hard. You’re facing things you just spend a week and a half pretending didn’t exist in your life while you were sipping down bottomless margaritas and slapping on some SPF15 by the pool.

I found myself taking down the holiday decorations from my room. The strand of Christmas lights and the gingerbread house scented candle and then, the holiday cards.

The holiday cards.

There’s so much power in a handwritten note from someone who feels something toward us. But yet, we only give those and receive those from people twice a year: on the day of our birth and during the holiday times.

I was thumbing through these cards, reading the messages that people wrote me, and I decided this: why do we have to put away everything associated to the holidays and the promise of a better, brand new year and the joy we feel when we’re all celebrating a time of the year when we feel like we should be extra nice to strangers and extra kind to strange things.

The holiday cards.

I didn’t put them away. I put them in a box and labeled the box “Read Me When You Need Me”. So, whenever i’m feeling like I need a pick me up, a reason to fall back in love with 2015, i’ll turn to that box of promise of joy of loving words from the people who love me the most and i’ll read them. I’ll toss them above my head and dance around underneath them like a figurine inside of a snow globe.