My New Year's resolution? To be 13 again...

It's all so gloomy! Can we rediscover our youthful optimism?

The I’s are dotted with hearts, the handwriting is varied, flipping from small and neat sentences to wide, dismayed capital letters surrounded by sad faces. Each page begins with ‘dear diary’ or sometimes just ‘dd’ and I’m directly speaking to the notebook, telling it (or her, there’s a strutting green co-ord clad Groovy Chick on the cover) where I’m at in life, how I’m feeling. Sometimes I apologise (I know I haven’t written in u for ages, but I lost u!!!) and I almost always sign off each entry with a flourished signature (with love and sadness, Katie Innes).

There were the classic entries, how I dreamed of a “big, fat juicy SNOG!!!!” with a boy whose picture I’d painstakingly cut out and Pritt Sticked into the pages, the typical angst of NO ONE WANTS TO GO OUT WITH ME and (a particular favourite of mine when discussing the pros and cons of a boy)…

I would also manifest (before manifesting was a ‘thing’) my dream day, showing up to school in “casual brown lipstick”, my eyes “vibrant”, detailing how: “everyone compliments me and I air kiss all my friends.” There were also endless check-lists of the type of woman I wanted to be: I imagined being older and owning fluffy slippers (my want for these cropped up a lot), doing 100 sit-ups each night (like Britney), having a boyfriend and running my very own magazine (“women behaving badly”).

Lists like this carried on for decades, growing in maturity with each year. I stopped striving for Miss Selfridge mules, and butterfly-print vests and instead pined for a baby-blue smeg fridge, and regular blow-dries. There were career goals, plotted out month-by-month, fitness ambitions, runs I’d definitely complete, 6am gym starts I’d definitely not hit snooze for…

I own so many notebooks, their pages now encrusted with dust, that held all of my plans, my dreams, my ideas of who I was going to be and where life was going to take me.

Then… I stopped.

It was 2020, I was 35-years-old and yes, there’s a glaringly obvious reason why, after decades of resolution writing and goal setting, I may have decided it was all a bit… pointless? But while lockdown-after-lockdown played its part, it’s not quite as simple as that. Nothing is. I was also grappling with a bruised-ego: my first published book came out in December 2019 and it just didn’t land how I dreamed it would (top ten bestseller list, perhaps a movie deal, you know, the book equivalent of winning the lottery). Magazine staff-lists were also being hacked at, this once thriving industry I’d battled my way into, a career I’d wanted and hoped for since that Groovy Chick diary, was at threat. Yes, I’d ticked off a lot but I could also see all the unmarked boxes, as well as the uncertainty in all that I had achieved. I felt like I was on an endless treadmill of dissatisfaction and I wanted off, thank you very much.

I’d scowl at my old self, looking back on my diaries with pity. How foolish I had been! Everything I wanted was shallow, I was a product of diet culture and consumerism. I had been buying into a false ideal: my imperfections were lies sold to me by advertising executives and my dreams were a capitalist con.

I was right… but I was also wrong.

We do exist in a culture that thrives and profits off our insecurities. I also did need to realign my ambitions and try to recognise what I really wanted versus what would make me look good. My teenage self was obsessed with popularity: there are graphs in the Groovy Chick diary detailing the main players in our school, with arrows plotting out who I was going to speak to, and how I was going to social climb my way up (“Louise sat at our table today, I can’t believe it! She’s middle popular” I wrote, one day, excitedly). It doesn’t make for proud reading, and, looking back I can recognise that this was a survival mechanism: I’d been bullied in primary school and was trying to prevent it from happening again. But I didn’t need to carry that obsession with being liked, and popular, into adulthood. And I did. It still lingers. These were things that did (and still do) need to be worked on, and redefined.

So, yes, some goals are silly. Some are a product of clever marketing. But does that mean I need to abandon all resolutions? Or, have I taken those valid reasons, coupled them with a bruised-ego and newfound fear of failure, and stopped trying completely? And, if I have, has that decision also been bolstered by the general atmosphere in the air? The ‘fuck it, why bother’ mentality that I think we’ve all (with very good reason) absorbed. I keep seeing this meme, circulated across my social media, that reads “I see none of you have said 2024 is going to be your year, we’ve all learned our lesson.” There’s negativity in the air and it’s been building, layer upon layer of it, for years.

And the thing is, I get it. I’ve written before how hard it is to feel hopeful. But my social media feed feels a little like an emo in a teen movie, one that would sneer at my old self and say: “oh you tried? You believed things could get better? How… sad.” I’ve also been that self-sabotaging bully and, truthfully, I’m a little tired of her.

Instead…

I WANT TO BE A GROOVY CHICK AGAIN.

I know there’s things to be pessimistic about, I also know all of the New Year’s advice, the “pick one thing and focus on that”, create “S.M.A.R.T goals” etc etc etc otherwise you’re “setting yourself up for failure.” But I’m leaning towards saying SCREW ALL THAT and writing a resolution list my 13-year-old self would feel excited and hopeful reading. I can also take all of my wisdom and create a list that contains no sit-ups, or longing towards stoopid boys, and instead add nothing but crazy, joyful, fun dreams. Dreams that I enjoy trying for, just as much as I enjoy reaching.

All I need, really, is a pen and paper.

What do you think? Are you setting resolutions? What did your younger self dream of? Let me know in the comments! And, as always, thank you for reading. I hope you had an OK Christmas and a wild New Year!