Alright, let’s get into it. So, here we are again.

You feel that? That specific, low-grade panic humming behind your ribs? It’s not just the residual tryptophan and questionable champagne. It’s the calendar. It’s flipped. And somewhere, probably in between scrolling through someone’s impossibly clean “New Year, New Me” grid and staring at the existential dread in your own refrigerator light, you got the memo.

The memo, of course, is that you’re supposed to have a List. A resolve. A bullet-pointed manifesto of self-flagellation disguised as self-improvement. “Go to the gym.” “Learn the ukulele.” “Meditate.” “Start a sourdough starter like it’s 2020 and we didn’t learn our goddamn lesson.” We clutch these resolutions like a talisman against the terrifying, formless void of another trip around the sun.

And how’s that been working for you?

Let me guess. By January 17th, the gym bag is a mournful, dusty sculpture in the back of your car. The ukulele is judging you from the corner. The only thing you’re cultivating is a profound sense of failure, watered daily with your own lukewarm disappointment. Congratulations. You’ve successfully taken a universal fresh start and turned it into a private performance review where you are both the cruel boss and the underperforming employee.

So here’s my proposal, my offering, my alternative to the annual ritual of setting yourself up to fail: Stop it. Just stop. Don’t make a resolution. Make an observation.

Instead of “I will go to the gym five times a week,” try this: “I notice that when I move my body, even stupidly, I feel less like a sentient bag of anxiety.” The goal isn’t a number on a machine. The goal is to notice the correlation. Instead of “I will read 50 books,” try “I notice I sleep better when I read for ten minutes instead of doomscroll.” The observation is the thing. It’s neutral. It’s data. It doesn’t call you a lazy piece of crap when you fall off. It just sits there, a quiet, non-judgmental fact.

Resolutions are a tyranny of the future self over the present self, a self that is tired, that had a weird holiday, that is doing its best. Observations are just… curious. They’re kinder. They’re the difference between a screaming drill sergeant and a therapist going, “Hm. Interesting. And how did that make you feel?”

So this year, don’t resolve. Get curious. Notice one tiny thing. That’s it. The pressure’s off. The list is burned. We’re just here, noticing, in the weird, hopeful, terrifying mess of another new beginning.

Happy New Year. Try not to hate yourself so much. It’s a start.

You know, I was thinking about this the other day, probably while I was making coffee and staring at the wall, waiting for the existential dread to kick in like it’s part of my morning routine. And it hit me, this idea of “holding space” for someone. It sounds like some woo-woo, therapy-speak thing, right? Like, are we a parking garage? Are we a container? But it’s not that. It’s… it’s actually a radical act of not doing. And for someone like me, whose default mode is to perform, to fix, to analyze, to interrupt with a barely-related anecdote, just shutting up and listening feels like holding a live grenade with the pin pulled. It’s terrifying.

Because here’s the privilege of it: When someone lets you hold space for them, they’re handing you their raw, unedited self. They’re saying, “Here, this is the wound. I’m not asking you to suture it. I just need you to not look away.” And you have to stand there, with your own baggage, your own desperate need to be the smartest person in the room, and you have to inhibit all that. You have to turn off the podcast in your head. That’s the importance of it—it’s anti-performance. It’s the opposite of the entire culture. We’re all screaming into our little digital voids, and holding space is the act of saying, “I’m here. I’m in the void with you. And I’m not recording this for content.”

It’s a privilege because, let’s be honest, most of us are barely holding space for ourselves. We’re a mess of anxious thoughts and reheated resentments. So when someone trusts you enough to let their chaos just vibrate in the air between you, without you trying to organize it or capitalize on it… that’s holy ground. It’s also uncomfortable as hell. There’s no payoff, no punchline, no validation for you. You’re just a witness. And in a world that commodifies every human experience, just being a witness, without agenda, might be the last truly sacred thing we’ve got left. And in all honesty, all these uniquely human skills are becoming rare and much more important.

Look, let me get something off my chest here. I’m sitting here in my office, right? OK, back bedroom. Whatever. And I’m staring at this… this thing, this little black rectangle on my desk. It can write a joke, it can mimic my voice, it can probably diagnose my existential dread with more accuracy than my last therapist. And I’m thinking: we’re all just… training to become the weird, analog holdouts in a digital theme park.

Everyone’s running around panic-applying for “Prompt Engineer” jobs, like that’s gonna last. Meanwhile, the real thing, the messy, unbearable, beautiful human thing, is going the way of record stores. You know what I mean? Empathy. Actually listening, not just waiting for your turn to talk or for the algorithm to serve you a response. The courage to be sincerely, cringingly wrong in a meeting instead of spitting out some sterile, AI-generated corporate jargon that says nothing. Looking someone in the eye and knowing, just knowing, that they’re having a bad day because you saw a micro-expression that no camera will ever truly capture.

That’s the irony, man! The more these machines get good at imitating skill, the more the actual human skills become this rare, precious artisanal commodity. Like sourdough or vinyl. We’re gonna be the ones leaning over the fence saying, ‘Yeah, the AI can give you a plan to motivate your team, but can it sit in awkward silence with a struggling employee and feel that discomfort until the real truth tumbles out?’ Probably not. And if it learns to fake that, God help us all. So suddenly, being a human, a genuinely present, emotionally clumsy, intuitively brilliant human, isn’t just important. It’s the last frontier of something real. And I don’t know about you, but that makes me wanna hold onto my messy humanity like a life raft in a sea of very, very competent bots.

---

So I’m slowly easing myself into the New Year. Over on my other blog Digital Marketing for Creatives, I’m giving no-fluff marketing advice for those who need to market, but don’t really want to. Why not pop over, I’d love to see you there.

I’ve some other projects coming up, but it’s too early in the year for that barrage of information, but you can subscribe to this blog below, for spam free updates and notifications. Just pop the email address in the box.