New years bring with them a strange mix of responsibility and reflection. There is often an unspoken pressure to feel renewed, motivated, and ready to begin again, as though the turning of a calendar page should automatically usher in clarity or transformation. I think this is because humans love the idea of clean closure and fresh beginnings, and New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day offer that in abundance. But as the year unfolds, I, like many others, tend to fall back into old patterns. By the time the next New Year rolls around, I find myself promising that this will be the year I do things differently.