I Didn’t Watch The Ball Drop

We put our kid to bed at 9, and then, me and my wife followed shortly after instead of pushing ourselves like two adults watching their youth die slowly. Ordinarily I would make a huge thing about the new year. I think most years I needed it to be new. I wanted to believe so badly that we can get a fresh start or reset the beginning of every new year.

And we’ve even found a way to visualize the entire concept with watching the ball drop as it has for centuries in accordance with our final second of the previous year turning us over.

We make it a point, each of us as individuals, to close out any business we had in the previous year… any lingering doubts or fears or troubles.

We triumphantly ready phrases to fall on deaf ears—‘like new year, new me’— and ultimately the deafness will be our own.

This year I decided to prioritize something else. To conceptualize the ‘new year’ as something else. Watching the ball drop

Also a euphemism— watching the ball drop is something I’m tired of. No ball dropping is going to carry as much weight as July 8th 2021 and anyone who knows me, knows why but if you don’t — that’s not the point here.

This is for the people who have always lived life waiting for the other shoe to drop so to speak. For things to change in an instant and definitely not for the better.

It’s hard to want to be excited to bring in year after year with everyone around you talking about how things are for sure “gonna be better this time around,” and maybe— it just doesn’t.

Maybe it’s being moved around from home to home since youth or growing up in a blended family while the world seemed to enter a dystopian era around you. A little melodramatic I know— it’s really more so that when you go 15… 20… 30 years around people trying to explain these terms as measured as possible from your most reasonable perspective you start to understand many people only have that.

Hear me out—

I’ve had $u*cidal ideation since I was a kid and I can tell you it really started with watching the ball drop in 2005. In that year I turned 11 and I guess had already 10 years of watching the world promise to be better and oh!! What a difference a decade makes… but not really right?

Being a January Capricorn also didn’t help I guess— meaning I watched everyone set a mile marker for when it was time to be a better person and what is more tangible and real than a year?

No, this year (inconsistent but still appreciative of the work put in) I’ve been in therapy. I’ve also been uncomfortably radical with approaching my own self acceptance. All in pursuit of being a better husband, father, brother, son, and man ultimately overall.

This isn’t to rain on anyone else’s parade to be fair. I respect that everyone has their own traditions and each means something unique to everyone- I guess. That’s why I’m sharing my own. See, growing up the way I did I never had much in the way of “traditions” so by time I turned eleven I had figured out my very own pattern for ringing in new years and applied the importance of having a hard deadline set for goal to achieve.

Step 1. Start with the goal.

My goal as I said simple— husband, father, better dude altogether.

Step 2. Define how I’m going to do that.

This is different for everyone and it’s argue every situation honestly.

Step 3. Begin.

It’s simple really, and by Dec 31st it’s easy to chart my successes and failures. That being said this year of our lord 2025, I wanted to be better in the way of showing up intentionally in my home by using what I know to help my family get the things they need. Starting with my wife.

She is the best mom to the most wonderfully spirited child and… it is exhausting. So she needs sleep, and that with my work schedule is difficult to achieve. Except when factoring in she understands that and so pushes as far as she can without asking.

But I can take opportunities like last night and just.. make.. a decision. Which I did. Eight solid hours of sleep on my final day off for a bit instead of trying to stretch my last few seconds with her, and who knows, next year might be different completely.

Happy new year to all of you, from my little family to yours.