Is it weird that I still carry a tiny glimmer of hope for the new year? For a lot of December 2021, I wasn’t sure I would. I wasn’t feeling the same excitement about a new year, even though I can’t say I was a huge fan of much of 2021.

But nonetheless, I found myself looking forward to the start of a new year. And it is nice to bid farewell to the past year and feel that sense of new beginning

I don’t do resolutions anymore for the new year and I’ll talk more about that in a bit, but I do have a few traditions. The first two are very mundane and tedious if I’m being honest. But they’re still my own traditions that have oddly helped me bring in the coming year with a sense of newness, and you’d be surprised at how satisfying it is when they’re done.