2017 is nearly here! A new year, a new outlook, a new resolution. Right?

Let's be real - we all feel refreshed and ready to take on the world on January 1. There's lots of energy, you have that gun-ho feeling of being able and ready to do everything and anything. You're optimistic, happy, inspired, and smiling. But we also know that resolutions are hard to follow after the first week or month of the new year. There are countless articles about keeping yourself motivated, with even more numerous tips to help ease the weight of a New Year's Resolution. Everything from keeping your goals small and manageable, having a buddy to keep you accountable, telling your friends via social media to have all of them keep you going, using apps to track your progress, rewarding yourself for small milestones, etc. Frankly, even the advice can get overwhelming.

Big or small, resolutions can be scary and intimidating, whatever they are. Change in general is pretty scary, so it's no surprise that after making your big resolution, you start to drift towards your old habits. Whether you make a resolution to stay healthy, sing in the rain, write a novel, get into graduate school, open your heart to a new relationship, talk to your far-away friends more often, or find a moment to smile about every day, we all wish to keep our momentum going past January.

The season influences you to make these resolutions, but most of them could be summarized to "living everyday life as best we can", to put it succinctly. We don't want to just wave through a window, we want to defy gravity (yes, those were Dear Evan Hanson and Wicked references, respectively), we all just want to be happy with the lives we live. Maybe we fall down, but that's just a part of our lives, and we pick ourselves up and keep going. As Margaret Mitchell's Scarlett O'Hara put it simply, "After all, tomorrow is another day" (Gone with the Wind, 1936).

Jojo Moyes wrote, "You only get one life. It's actually your duty to live it as fully as possible" (Me Before You, 2012). That includes making mistakes, potentially very big ones, very stupid ones, or very trivial ones, but mistakes that help you to evolve and learn nonetheless. You don't need a declarative resolution to make those mistakes, and you definitely don't need it to remember what makes you happy and what makes you feel like you're living the life you want.

So make your resolutions, but remember that it doesn't have to be New Year's Eve for you to make resolutions and don't be disappointed when you can't hold on to them past January. Remember that you can make them everyday, restart everyday. Look at the stars, reach for them, and show everyone that your feet are still on the ground. For as Walt Disney said, "All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them." Go after them every day, even the little quotidian ones. Go after them not just because it's that's time of year.