Let’s face it: 2016 got away from me. From all of us, maybe. So 2017 is all about staying awake for me. Making small but real changes to feel better about my role in the world: as a mother, as a woman, as an American, and as a citizen of Earth. It doesn’t really feel like a full on new year. It feels like we are in the middle of things. New Year’s feels arbitrary and irrelevant. Reminds me of a poem I read as a kid:

HAPPY NEW YEAR, ANYWAY

January first isn’t New Year’s.

Everyone knows that.

The real new year is in September

when school starts.

January comes in the middle of the year,

when the edges of your notebook are all worn

and those new pencils with your name in gold

have been broken or borrowed or lost.

And your mother starts looking at your shoes

and saying, “Are those getting too tight for you?”

Everything’s old by January.

The teacher has long since stopped

playing games to learn your names

and asking how your summer was.

And you’re right in the middle,

smack in the middle of the hardest math.

There’s nothing new about January.

But your parents don’t know that,

with their party horns and midnight kisses.

And they have the calendar on their side.

So Happy New Year, anyway.

You might as well pretend.

                                    Joanna Cole

I’ve been out of school for ages, and while I still miss the freshness of a new school year with new notebooks and folders, I’ve come around to January 1 as the mark of a new year. It’s as good a time as any, really (despite being in the middle of winter). But this year, I find myself thinking back to that poem. I made my resolutions last summer, after the series of police shootings that made the news; after I started reading The New Jim Crow. After I realized I’d been sleeping. If that wasn’t enough, Donald Trump was elected, and I was deeply disturbed to see just how deep my slumber had been. It really underscored the importance of paying attention and taking an active role in community and politics.

I learned a lot from 2016. I learned that civic engagement is important to me and that its absence can have disastrous consequences. I learned that staying at home with a child is a constantly changing work environment. Setting high-minded goals of self improvement just doesn’t make sense. What works on Sunday might not still work on Thursday. I even tried keeping it simple, but it clearly wasn’t enough as I stopped even thinking about my goals halfway through the year (though I’ll give you an update on my progress in the next few weeks, anyway).

So this year, it’s about rules and habits. Better living through self-discipline, sort of thing. Rules and habits seem like more realistic bits to put on a plate already full with a busy life, a world to save (apparently), and small person to keep alive. Small is big.