Here it is again, another year gone, another post made ten months after the previous entry, just to justify to myself why I keep paying $200 to keep this website up and running. Another year of losses and disasters, of discovery and joy, and even as times continue to be unprecedented, here I still am, another holiday kerfuffle settled and dealt with, another year older at the very least.

I am self-absorbed and navel-gazey. I think every writer is, to some extent; a writer who isn’t self-aware on some level is either successful enough for it not to matter much to themselves anymore or an idiot, often both. We make our mirrors through which we view the world, each mirror unique, each mirror flawed and warped. We fancy ourselves the Lady of Shalott, perhaps, or a participant in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Either way, there is always a sense that our perceptions are unreal, but honest: it’s all we know, and yet we know that what we view and how we view it isn’t always quite true to facts. Sorry, did I say writers? I meant all creators in general. Or maybe I meant people with anxiety. Or maybe I meant everyone, all of us, have to know on some level that our experiences are disconnected from reality. The car makes a funny noise. I have a panic attack. The noise turns out to be a small, fixable error, and the terrors I imagined that drove me to panic aren’t true, the reaction I had that was perfectly proportional to the horrors I was imagining is suddenly disproportionate to the tame reality and therefore is now an overreaction.

All this to say, when this time of year rolls around, out with the old and in with the new, I get more introspective than usual, which is saying something. We’re conditioned to. New Year’s Resolutions are the ultimate tool of self-flagellation, and like true masochists, we walk into it every time.

So, here’s something: I reject New Year’s Resolutions this year.

I don’t need to be handing myself more opportunities to sharpen my self-loathing on broken promises based on unrealistic expectations of myself. I don’t need to do myself the disservice of setting myself up to fail, even with the best of intentions. As my therapist keeps saying—begging, two years into our acquaintance—I need to be nicer to myself. Because, as the brilliant post on my social media feed goes and has gone, if bullying myself into being better worked, it would have worked by now. I’d be the most successful person in my family. So, instead of New Year’s Resolutions, or a wish list of things I’d love to get done, or unrealistic goals based on my ability to pick up habits I have shown absolutely zero aptitude for in the past: I’m going to try giving myself a break.

To be clear: a break is not permission to float through life without a plan and hope for the best. It isn’t telling myself I’ve been working so hard and I deserve to play video games at the end of every day. It isn’t even really much of a change or a goal. Closer to a concept or a hope, perhaps, but what I mean is: I am going to curb my disproportionate reaction to the belief that I am worthless and will fail at everything I try. Because, despite the many perceived failures and failings crowding behind my eyes at this very moment, even as I type, that belief is not a reality. It’s my warped perception of myself, the nugget at my core that it took me eight years of therapy to not only unearth, but to truly examine and see where its veins run in my foundation. Of course I didn’t get into graduate school any of the times I tried, I’m a shit writer and a terrible person. Of course I don’t have a job in my preferred field, I suck at it and at everything else I do. Of course I haven’t moved out of my parents’ house, I’m a coward and would be homeless within six months because I’m fucking useless. Because that’s the thing about having a fundamental flaw in the creation of your mirror through which you see everything else: it warps everything within its reflection.

Unlike metaphorical mirrors, however, warped self-perception is something that can be changed, polished out and evened out. I’m not a shit writer. I don’t suck at everything I do. I’m not fucking useless. I’m giving myself a break from feeling like that, and in its place, trying this on for size, a well-worn mantra my mother gave me that I’ve been too depressed and panicked and overreactive to really grasp: I can do hard things.

I’m scared shitless, but I still got my driver’s license. I can do hard things.

I have so little energy left over from my day job, but I still am gouging out editing and writing experience. I can do hard things.

I make so many mistakes, but I’m still making and finding gluten-free foods that taste good and I love. I can do hard things.

My parents tell me often of the fearless little toddler that I used to be, before the anxiety set in. I resent her sometimes, that mouthy little genius. I wonder where she went, and why she took all our good looks with her. Then I shrug and put on my galaxy-print leggings and my glitter eyeshadow and go make a coworker twenty years my senior laugh over a clever quip to soothe hurt feelings in my daycare class. I’m giving myself a break from obsessing over who I should be and instead trying to embrace who I am, and seeing where that gets me instead of constant self-criticism.

Spoiler alert: who I am unironically owns a propeller beanie now.