I find New Year a strange mix of emotions - a time of reflection on the year just ending and the promise and potential of the year to come. 7 years ago I started a little personal tradition of writing myself a letter on New Year’s Eve. I have usually started to think about this in the weeks leading up to New Year, as I open the one from the previous year just after Christmas. I tend to forget over the course of the year what I have written, and it is lovely to open the envelope and rediscover what I had hoped for. It is a lovely way of reflecting on the different aspects of the year and noting what has happened as hoped for, but also that which hadn’t been expected or planned.
So, what do I write about? It is usually a mixture of hopes, wishes and goals, which relate to me, my friends and family and my work life. Since I have started doing this there has always been at least 1 and sometimes up to 5 new babies expected in the coming year, and so their safe arrival is something which always features. However on a couple of occasions I get to New Years Eve and we have had new babies born which were not even known about at the time of writing!
I always like to reflect on my personal relationships with those closest to me and think about how they can be maintained or improved. However, sometimes the letter has included a resolution to be stronger and cut ties with relationships which are not so positive.
Since being a mum my working life has been very varied, very eclectic and almost constantly changing so I always tend to give myself at least a general direction, or vague guidance about where I would like to be with regard to work by the end of the following year. For example last year I made the decision that I would stop working in the evenings as it no longer fitted in with family life.
I have found my annual letter a really helpful way for me to deal with some of the bigger and more emotional hurdles. When I wrote my first letter my mum was terminally ill, so I made a wish about how those last few months would be. The following year I wrote “……and I hope that the pain of losing my mum will not be so raw every day and we all learn, not to forget, but just miss her less”. More recently mentions of my mum have been to do with how I think she would feel about my life, or how I am going to ensure my children learn about the Gran they never knew.
I also write about the small, the practical and the more mundane things – like repaint the hall, tidy the front garden and remember to put the bins out on the right day! Very often different things can be related to each other - so ‘get a better paid job’ will also help with ‘have a family holiday abroad’ and my ‘not working in the evenings’ also had a positive effect on ‘spend more time with husband’.
The idea of the letter is not to be a list of ‘New Years resolutions’ (which are likely to be forgotten and broken by January!). It is more a series of reflections and feelings, a purely personal dialogue, and one which I don’t want to see pinned on a wall or shared with anyone. Many of the things I hope and wish for I have no control over - they either will happen or not. Other times they are things I can control, and if they continue to be important to me then I am likely to achieve them. Sometimes the letter has been a list, sometimes a couple of paragraphs and other years it may be a few pages. As it is purely private and personal there is no pressure on its appearance or grammatical accuracy…..it is more a stream of consciousness.
So right now I am looking forward to reading last year’s letter to myself to see what I managed to achieve and to see how far I’ve come this year. And on New Years Eve I will be putting down on paper everything I want to improve and would like to achieve in 2010, no doubt accompanied by a nice glass of wine to help my letter writing flow!
Snap I do the same thing. I was thinking about publishing it this year on my blog, but thought better of it!
What a wonderful thing to do. I’m going to copy you and start this year. Merry Christmas x
It’s wonderful to create personal traditions. Over the past few years my family (husband, daughter and I) have started our own little traditions which have come to mean something very special to us. One of them is writing a New Year letter. Each New Year’s Day, after dinner we read out last years letter and share our hopes and dreams for next year. For us it is so important to have that time of reflection and to keep our traditions alive. We also use the occassion to make a committment to each other. Over the years we have achieved wonderful things from that tiny promise on a dark winter’s night. Thank you for sharing xxx
May I say that you have quite an appealing style of writing!
Where’s the subscribe button? 
Love this idea! I think I’ll start writing myself a letter each year on my birthday. It will be a great way to track my hopes and achievements, and perhaps a chance to pat myself on the back, rather than tending to be too critical about myself. Thank you for sharing!