Don't read the last page

There’s something about a new year that makes people want to announce themselves. New goals. New habits. New identities. A ceremonial turning of the page, as if December 31st quietly closes a book and January 1st hands us a blank one.

I’ve never fully bought into that version of things.

I don’t make resolutions. I don’t believe in waking up on January 1 as a fundamentally different person than I was the day before. Change doesn’t work like that for me… it never has. What does work is intention. Language. A sentence or a word that I can return to when the year inevitably stops feeling new.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve marked the beginning of a year with statements rather than promises. Sometimes it’s a single word. Sometimes it’s a sentence that feels sturdy enough to hold me when things get messy. One year—during one of the most significant transitions of my life—my sentence centered on shedding the weight of obligation. Not becoming more productive or more impressive, but lighter. Less tethered to what I thought I should be doing, and more curious about who I actually was.

That sentence didn’t “fix” anything overnight. It didn’t usher in a montage of personal growth set to upbeat music. What it did was give me permission to look honestly at the next phase of my life with curiosity and excitement.

This year, like many years before it, my reflection into what comes next was shaped by Taylor Swift (Tay and I have literally grown up together)... specifically by a line in The Manuscript: “The professor said to write what you know… lookin’ backwards might be the only way to move forward.”

That line hits me straight in the tear ducts every time. Not because it’s poetic (though it is), but because it names something deeply countercultural about how we’re taught to think about growth. We’re encouraged to look ahead. Manifest. Envision. Optimize. Rarely are we invited to sit with what’s already happened—especially when it’s complicated, unfinished, or painful.

But the truth is, I don’t know how to write about becoming without writing about who I’ve been.

Looking back isn’t about getting stuck. It’s about orientation. It’s about understanding the terrain you’ve already crossed and the choices you made for survival... the beliefs you inherited, the roles you played before you had language for what you needed. Ignoring that history doesn’t make you freer; it just makes you less honest.

For me, the beginning of a new year isn’t a clean slate. It’s more like opening a notebook and realizing there are margins filled with notes, pages dog-eared, sentences crossed out and rewritten. The story is ongoing. The handwriting changes. But it’s all still part of the same manuscript.

This blog—this season of writing—is an act of looking backward with intention. Not to romanticize the past or re-litigate it, but to understand it. To trace the through-lines. To notice what I carried because I had to, and what I might finally be ready to set down.

If there’s an opportunity that comes with “beginning again,” I think it lives here: in telling the truth about where we’ve been. In refusing the pressure to reinvent ourselves on demand. In choosing reflection over performance.

Maybe moving forward doesn’t require a dramatic leap. Maybe it asks for something quieter: a willingness to remember, to name, and to keep writing anyway. (Points for the Swifities who understand this blog's title - hold on to the memories!)