Confessions From a New Year’s Resolutionist

Emmy Chen

2024

The air smelled like fireworks, wildness, it was the kind of night that hums under your skin. There was glitter in my teeth, silver confetti tangled in my hair, and we were half-frozen in our too-thin windbreakers. My throat hurt from laughing too loud at jokes that didn’t survive in the daylight. I’ve spun myself dizzy from twirling in the city square, from the cold slicing my lungs open, and the kind of joy that makes you forget the names of people around you. 

My friends were popping bottles of sparkling grape juice, and one turned to me. 

“So what’s the New Year’s resolution for this year?” Nathan said.

At that moment, the magic cracked a little. I didn’t answer right away. The question hung there for a minute, swaying like the soap bubbles around us. Around us, Rome thrummed—horns honking in celebration, lost mittens on the ground, someone singing Bella Ciao an entire verse off-key, but it’s okay. 

Nathan pretended to cough. “Don’t say world peace.”

I crossed my arms. “Okay, I was going to say ‘stop procrastinating’.”

He snorted. “Bold of you to assume that future you isn’t already watching BBC Politics at 3 a.m. with an untouched geography essay due at eight.”

That’s painful.

I glanced down at my hands—red from the cold and sticky from touching an unknown substance. I was thinking of something to say. I’ve always wanted to be the kind of person who did yoga unannounced, journals in cursive, and didn’t ghost her group chats when life got overwhelming.

All I managed was a shrug. “I’ll probably break it by Tuesday.”

Nathan grinned. “Optimism. We love to see it.”

“I don’t even have a proper resolution yet.” 

“Exactly. You’re already behind.”

He fumbled in his jacket pocket and pulled out the saddest, most lukewarm bottle of apple cider we’d bought at that random mini-market by the Roman Pantheon. It was sticky around the rim, but he held it up like it was vintage merlot. “To the annual crash-and-burn.”

I took it and raised the glass. “To big dreams and no follow-through whatsoever.”

We clinked. It was warm and fizzy and tasted faintly of disappointment.

Somewhere nearby, a moped backfired. ABBA blared from a second-floor window. My feet were aching from walking the entire city in heels that, unfortunately, were not made for cobblestones. Nathan’s scarf was trailing dangerously close to a puddle that smelled like either espresso or death.

And still—everything’s golden. Rome was glowing with its postcard magic like it always was for my triennial visits. We were sleep-deprived, slightly sweaty, limbs aching from too much glee, standing in the middle of the Eternal City with nothing figured out and nowhere else to be.

Sitting on the Spanish Steps, I thought hard about my resolution, turning the cogs in my brain backwards to think about the past ones I’ve made. Every New Year’s Eve, I told my friends about my big resolution, full of confidence like I was the poster child for self-discipline. The thing was, it had become a running joke in the friend group that I’ve never actually stuck to any of them. I couldn’t exactly back out now, my pettiness to prove them wrong would never let me. I’d also just straight up got peer-pressured into making them. I’d made these promises for the past four years in different alien places, each one forgotten quicker than the last. 

For as long as I could remember, New Year's has meant city-hopping in Europe. I’ve lived this tradition like a pilgrimage, the thrill of seeing a new place, tasting new food, and celebrating with friends. It has also been a tradition to have something go catastrophically wrong. Since my parents had their annual no-kids-allowed hotel conference in Hong Kong during New Year’s (also known as their annual child-free getaway), they’d been happy to pass the travel reins to me, under the condition that I would stay with family friends they trusted and not gallivant around the city ferally. Their work schedule just happened to be my ticket to roam Europe every January.

As I sat on the Steps, watching my friends laugh and joke around, hearing Romanesco swirl around us, I tried to relax. Rome is my favourite place, which is why I wanted to go here this New Year’s. I wanted to enjoy the feeling of being swept up in the present.

Only this time, the feeling hit differently. The city felt both distant and intimately close.

It was my last New Year’s in Europe.

I didn’t realise how deeply it would affect me until it did. My father’s retirement was the force behind this change, and his presence wasn’t needed at Marriott conferences anymore. My passport to Europe, which I had taken for granted all these years, was eliminated. The city of Rome, golden as ever, suddenly felt like it was closing its doors for the last time. 

2020

I was eleven when this tradition first took root. After being exiled from the hotel conference, my siblings and I found ourselves wandering the streets of Paris. They had disappeared into the night, off to join their friends, while I was left behind with my friend Chloe. Chloe and I had met years before, back in Hong Kong at international school. She was four years older than me, and we used to be bitter rivals. I would scowl at her across the playground, and she’d shoot me a dirty look, probably thinking I was some annoying prat she couldn’t shake off. But then, like a bad rom-com that somehow works out, we became the best of friends. When Chloe moved to Paris, it felt like I’d lost my favourite sparring partner, leaving a gaping hole in my life. I mourned the loss like people mourn the end of their favourite TV show.

We wandered through the streets near the Eiffel Tower, the city lit up in gold and silver. The cold Parisian air bit at my cheeks as we crossed bridges, and even in the frost, everything felt alive. I dug my hands deep into my pockets as I pondered what my resolution would be this year. The sky above the rooftops was dark, but the golden lamplights and street performers gleamed. At the stroke of midnight, the fireworks exploded, and at that moment, I felt like I could be anyone. One who stuck to promises. 

After, as we strolled through the gardens of Paris, the trees looked like they were caught between two worlds, their bare branches reaching up to the grey sky. On top of the scent of sweat and weed, the area had a lingering petrichor from the drying grass. I could feel the damp dirt seep into my ballet flats, and each step seemed to sink a little deeper into the Earth. I watched the delicate tips of primrose pushing through the cold ground, little rebellions against the harsh winter. I pointed them out to Chloe. She squinted at the flowers, her brow furrowed. 

“You should get a plant,”  she said. “It could be your New Year’s resolution. To take care of a plant.” 

That offhand suggestion became a perfect idea that would shape the rest of my year. I didn’t want it to slip my mind. When I returned to Chloe’s parents’ apartment, I wrote it down on the condensation of the shower door. On the back of my train ticket. On every random Post-it note until I returned home.

It had all seemed so promising. I remember the trip to the garden centre, picking out the perfect cacti after careful inspection. I ended up coming home with not one, but two cacti. I placed them on my windowsill like tiny green soldiers that would somehow thrive despite my busy schedule. For a brief moment, I convinced myself that this was it—I had mastered the art of responsibility. I would water them regularly, give them enough light, and they would bloom. 

It wasn’t until exam season that the full extent of my plant failure became apparent. The textbooks piled up around me looked like an impenetrable fortress, pages of notes scattered on the floor, and the looming weight of exams pressing down on me. I had chosen the easiest plants to take care of—cacti and succulents— yet I still failed. Between the late-night study sessions and the highlighter stains on my hands, my green soldiers sat untouched in the corner. 

I didn’t even notice at first. My focus was elsewhere, buried in computer science notes that I couldn’t make sense of. But one afternoon, as I cracked open the door to my room after a long day of studying, I was hit with the unmistakable smell of decay. I stopped mid-step, grimacing at the scent. Then I saw them—those poor, dried-up husks sitting on my windowsill.

Both of them. Completely and utterly dead.

The first one had gone entirely crispy, its leaves curled, as if it had been left in the sun to ferment. The other one had gone a dull, brownish shade. They were no longer the vibrant, hopeful green they had been when I brought them home. 

I stood there for a moment, staring at the cacti, feeling a strange mixture of guilt and outright lack of care. It was almost ironic that my plants were withering away during the most stressful time of the year. They were, in a sense, victims of the same thing I was. I couldn’t even muster the energy to throw out the pots right away. Instead, I left it there for another week, still sitting in the urns like tragic little monuments of failure. I dialed Chloe that night to give her an overview of the cacti’s short lifespan. 

2021

The following year, I found myself in Barcelona, New Year’s Eve unfolding in full force. I tagged along with my siblings again, unknowingly their last European escapade at New Year’s. I had collected a whole gang of friends in Spain through the school’s track and field club. Our parents have also been welded together through track meets and afternoon tea. The group consisted of slightly deranged, endorphin-fueled athletes who had formed a tight bond through endless 10Ks every weekend. We shared more inside jokes and collective pain than I care to admit. They were also borderline nationalist. Most of them didn’t actually live in Spain, but every holiday, they’d head back home to the motherland. I was the closest with Maria, a girl with a dog that constantly molested me. 

The air here was warm for this time of year, the city claws at the lunisolar calendar for summer. The plan was to go to the fiestas, but from the chaos of the year, we decided we wanted something quieter, which was how we ended up waiting for midnight on the beach.

We lit sparklers with blue fingers and pretended we were in movies while sand leaked into our Bluetooth speakers. It felt sacred until Maria set off the sparkle sticks. She said she found it in her dad’s garage, next to the broken leaf blower and a pack of expired cookie mix. We should’ve known not to trust her with anything flammable. We backed away. Not enough. 

Instead of soaring up like normal physics-abiding sparkle sticks, it shot sideways with the speed and vengeance of someone deeply wronged—straight into us. A spark hit the hem of Maria’s shirt and the strap of my top, and suddenly, we were on fire. I’d love to say that we reacted with much grace, but, woefully, we did not. I screamed first, theatrically, and watched as my friends slapped the fire on their garments. 

We ran full-speed into the freezing water, clothes flaming, limbs flailing, sparkle sticks abandoned in the sand like forensic evidence at a crime scene. A wave hit me in the face, knocking me under. I came up spluttering, half-laughing, half-almost-dying, my favourite top clinging to me like seaweed. The friends who were fortunate enough not to erupt in flames collapsed into the shadowed sands, laughing until they couldn’t breathe. Maria’s eyeliner ran down her face like war paint. 

Later, when we were drying off in a restaurant’s hand dryer, dripping seawater onto the tile floor, I wrote that year’s resolution on a napkin with a borrowed lip liner: Take better care of myself, I wrote. I paused, then added more, because vague promises are just easier to break. Hydrate. Eat lunch that isn’t a granola bar. Stop pulling all-nighters for tests I instantly forget. I folded the contract and stuffed it in my soggy pocket. It decayed somewhere between the restaurant and the metro station, and honestly, so did my resolution. 

January went smoothly enough. I made my way through the days, sitting outside during lunch breaks, studying in the sun whenever I could. I even bought a reusable water bottle instead of only drinking water when it was lying within arm’s reach. I basked in the sun like a wellness influencer. But it didn’t take long for my enthusiasm to wane. I sat outside for two solid days, then I realised that studying outside wasn’t as great as I had pictured in my head. Between sunburns and the wind gusts making my flashcards fly away my outdoor study sessions became less serene and more disastrous. 

By February, my new resolution withered into a sad, half-hearted experiment in seeing how long I could survive on a granola bar. I carried around my reusable bottle, taking a guilt-induced sip every six hours or so. I was convinced that hydration was optional. The granola bars became my go-to lunch. I didn’t have a rationalisation for why I ate them other than the thought that they were “efficient.” 

Adversity struck during track practice one afternoon, the kind where we were gearing up for the big race. I was pumped. I aligned my foot to the white line and kneeled on the red turf, the familiar burn of epinephrine pulsating against my prefrontal cortex. The gun went off, and I sprinted down the track, already knowing I would win this race. About halfway through the event, my body quit. My vision blurred, my feet tangled against each other, and I hit the ground hard. My face bounced once against the polyurethane ungracefully. My team rushed over, and I stared up at their faces silhouetted against the rose-tinged sky.

I lay there, feeling the rubber of the synthetic turf start to leave an imprint on my face. Someone from the stands shouted, “Great form!” sarcastically. Meanwhile, my coach, ever the motivator, took this as an opportunity for one of his pep talks while I was still in a position that would later be known as  “horizontal failure.” This is what separates us from the good and the great…the ability to rise to challenges…it’s a process. In the background, my teammates dutifully snapped 0.5 photos of me like paparazzi at a celebrity meltdown, capturing the full glory of my failure. As for me, I couldn’t help but think about how I was undone by the pinnacle of efficiency: a granola bar. In the end, my resolution to be a self-care guru collapsed in doom, as I failed to care for anything except for my growing list of excuses. The simple promise to take better care of myself proved to be as fleeting as the sparkler’s glow on the beach in Barcelona that night. 

2022

With renewed hope, I landed in rain-slicked London to greet my Briton friends after another year of breaking resolutions. I had graduated from travelling with my siblings this year, after they were shipped off to an arts school in Massachusetts. The city felt a bit more like home during New Year’s since I had gathered a group of Londoner friends while studying at a British school for years. This group included Krissa Lek, who got made fun of by our touch rugby coach because “lek” meant “short” in Thai, apparently. She would never admit that she was actually vertically challenged. There was also Seb Scrase, who had a sixth sense for planning unconventionally perfect New Year’s adventures. I was determined for this New Year’s to go right. We had a foolproof grand plan: we’d hit the London Eye an hour before midnight, just for the view. We figured everyone would be too busy looking for a spot by Big Ben to chant down, leaving the Eye blissfully empty. To our surprise, it worked. We waltzed into the capsule with minimal waiting time and elbowing. The city glittered below us and stretched out in all directions. We pressed our faces to the glass like kids at an aquarium, the black ribbon of the Thames curling around the buildings.

Somewhere around 11:30, the Eye jolted to a stop near the top. “Just a temporary pause,” they said over the intercom. Unfortunately, the “pause” stretched into a full-blown intermission, suspending us midair like New Year’s ornaments with nowhere but down to go—or rather nowhere to go at all. At first, we paced. Then we slumped. Then we accepted our fate. Someone pulled out their tiny speaker and played a questionable remix of Nirvana and Oasis. Seb Scrase, who was not “scrase” of sweets, pulled out a bag of smuggled Percy Pigs, handing them out like we were survivors on a lifeboat. “Survival rations,” he said with a grin. 

As the clock inched closer to midnight, the intercom crackled a countdown we half-followed, our voices echoing off the curved glass. At zero, Krissa threw paper confetti made from old receipts, and we toasted the New Year with lukewarm hot chocolate from a thermos someone’s mum had packed. 

All of London seemed to ignite at once. From our perch in the sky, we saw it all—bursts of gold blossoming over the Thames, streaks of red slicing the horizon, shimmering in every mirrored building and waterway. It was sublime. Someone squeezed my hand. Someone was recording a message for themselves in the future. I pressed my forehead to the glass, trying to memorise it all—this strange little pocket of suspended joy. 

When the capsule finally descended and the doors peeled open, we stumbled out like newborn deer. We were starving and slightly dazed, with our spirits unreasonably high. Someone suggested St. Paul’s Cathedral to watch any remaining fireworks before bed. So we sprinted. Weaved through South Bank, shouted apologies to startled tourists, and followed the sound of fireworks like sirens. We were met with a vile number of stairs when we finally arrived at the worshipping place. 528, to be exact. They curled upwards like an architectural middle finger. We laughed, cursed whoever built them, and climbed anyway. By step fifty, our lungs were staging a rebellion. By step eighty, someone was reciting their will. We kept going. Then we didn’t. We collapsed mid-spiral, backs pressed against cold steel, breathing like we had just outrun death. The cinematic vision of the fireworks was forgotten, and we simply sank into the moment. We talked about everything and nothing while we recovered from fatigue: the dumbest things we’d cried over or what we wanted to major in at university. 

Somewhere during the conversation, I wrote my resolution for this year in my notes app. Learn how to cook properly, I typed. I decided at that moment that I was tired of googling “what happens if pasta water evaporates entirely” or covering the smoke alarms in my dorm from one of my culinary accidents. I folded my phone into my pocket like it was an oath. 

When I flew home a few days later, I approached my resolution eager and delusional. I stood in front of the stove like it was some foreign contraption I’d never quite understood, with the hope that Google could guide me. I took a deep breath, cracked my knuckles, and stared at the recipe on my iPad. The bolded instructions seemed simple enough. Add salt to boiling water. Easy. What I didn’t notice in my overconfidence was the chaotic, aquatic rebellion when the water surged up and spilled over the sides. By the time I realised what was happening, half the stove was covered in pasta water, and the kitchen looked like a small-scale flood zone.

Next came the sauce. I tossed the garlic into the pan, smothering it in olive oil. It sputtered and hissed at me, and the second I turned my back, the garlic had turned into blackened ruins. Undeterred, I added the store-bought tomato sauce anyway, despite the already-formed disaster. The moment it hit the pan, it joined the garlic in creating a pungent mix of charred hopes and defeat, thick in the air like a bad omen. I scraped the sauce off the pan with a spatula and a prayer while it clung to the surface, mocking me for my kitchen hubris. 

When I finally sat down to eat, I dared to believe it might taste like a Michelin star dish. The pasta was soggy, and the sauce was blackened past recognition. Each bite I took added to my slow realisation that cooking was not for me. My parents asked me to please please please not set foot in our kitchen again. The smell of burnt garlic stayed in our kitchen for days, a haunting reminder of my overzealous attempt to conquer a skill that had forever eluded me. The resolution I had written with such hope half a week ago was a joke. I pushed my plate of cheap, massacred pasta away, silently mourning the death of this resolution. 

2023

The following New Year’s found me in a city that seemed to defy the chaos of my kitchen calamity. I was in Venice, where the gondolas bobbed lazily along the canals, their wooden hulls creaking like ambient noise. The narrow streets wound through the city like they were built to get you lost. I had gone to Venice to visit two friends, Lorenzo and Sophia. Their parents owned a little apartment near the square, which they would see during the winter. I visited during 2023, when the high tide rolled in like an uninvited guest. 

We all got dressed up for the countdown despite Venice deciding to impersonate Atlantis for the holidays. I was in a silk skirt that didn’t fit weather warnings, and Lorenzo had ironed his shirt for once. We were ankle deep in canal water, warm from the crowd, cold from the night, glittering with reflections and maybe a bit of sewer. We held our shoes above our heads like museum artefacts. Still, we didn’t go home. We waded into St. Mark’s Square as if it were our birthright, with sparkling apple juice in hand like a deranged Vogue shoot.

I stepped on something unpleasant and unidentified, possibly a sea creature or a wet paper bag with dreams. Lorenzo swore he saw a fish. Google Maps died twenty minutes after telling us to swim. We tried to follow the sound of music and ended up in a corner that smelled like brine and cigarette smoke. 

When we reached the main square, the flood had become part of the celebration. People were barefoot, water lapping around their ankles. It was the type of complete chaos that made you laugh. The sound of fireworks didn’t just explode above us; they bounced off the water, making the sky and the canals seem like a united celebration. I thought Venice was still beautiful even when it was trying to drown us.

We toasted our apple juice to the sky, laughing too loud, shoes slung over our shoulders like forgotten accessories. The music drifted from every corner, some distant brass band, and the soft beat of drums mixed with the splash of water. 

2024

We were still sitting on the Spanish Steps, the night air thick with the lingering warmth of a Roman winter. An odd sadness dangled around in the air, like the city knew it was the last time. Some of my friends had come straight from the Euro Express, a group of them travelling from neighbouring countries to say goodbye. It felt too surreal.

To pull me back from the intensity of the moment, someone tugged at my hair and snapped fingers in front of my face.

“Hellooooo?” Nathan’s voice broke through my reverie.

I blinked and shook myself out of the heavy nostalgia.

“Sorry,” I laughed, brushing hair out of my eyes. I took a deep breath, returning to the present like a screenager when their phone is taken away. The laughter didn’t feel quite right. It didn’t feel real at all. It stayed put in the atmosphere like a lie I just couldn’t quite admit yet.

I still couldn’t shake the feeling of knowing this joy was fleeting. Next year, it would all change. I was going to be sent off to school in the States. This would be my last trip to Europe for who knows how long. I’d never walk these streets with the same group of friends, never feel the same weight of time slipping away from us.

Maria sat next to me, her legs dangling off the edge of the steps as she stared down at the rusted fountain at the end of the staircase. I couldn’t help but notice how different she seemed after our time apart. She was quiet tonight.

I nudged her. “You okay?”

“Do you remember the first time we were here?”

I didn’t quite know what she was getting at. “I was only six. I don’t remember that much.”

Maria laughed. “You cried because you thought you’d never come back to Rome.”

I was surprised by her response. My memory of that wasn’t exactly in HD. But she was right. As family friends, we have been on countless vacations together. I’d been so overwhelmed by how pretty the European architecture was. The summer heat, the cobblestones, the church bells. I remember clutching my mother’s hand, thinking this place was too perfect.

“That sounds like me,” I said. “I also remember Sophia couldn’t stop throwing coins in the fountain, hoping her wishes would come true.”

Sophia snorted. “You never know until you try.”

We started talking about our previous summer in Rome, the last time we were all together like this. Nathan leaned back and crossed his arms. “Remember when we almost got kicked out of the church for being too loud?”

“Yeah, because you wouldn’t stop asking if that big hole in the dome was a mistake,” Maria retorted.

“You’re going to get us banned from every historical site in Rome,” Lorenzo said.

“They did end up telling us that the hole was intentional, though.” The laughter and the background noise blended into familiar comfort. 

“Remember when we got caught in that rainstorm by the Colosseum?” Chloe asked.

“Yeah. I looked like a drowned rat,” I said.

Lorenzo stretched out his legs on the step. “That was the day we ended up hiding under that awning for two hours, trying to escape that horrid downpour. We were all there.” I remembered how perfect that day had felt, huddling under a flimsy piece of fabric.

“And when you guys tried to make pizza in my apartment and all ended up with food poisoning?” Nathan asked.

“I thought I was going to die,” I groaned. “That flour was expired for sure.”

“That was not edible,” Lorenzo added, shaking his head. “I remember waking up thinking I’d been hit by a truck.”

“Never doing that again,” I said, I couldn’t help smiling at the memory. Despite my response, I knew for certain that I would do it all again if I could.  

We all huddled close together from the chilly night as our conversation ebbed and flowed. We passed around an old camcorder, watching clips of old trips, our faces illuminated by the light from the screen. I listened to the laughter, the hum of foreign language, the distant crackling of fireworks. If life didn’t kill me, nostalgia would. 

“Feels like yesterday,” Maria remarked.

“Guess we’re getting old,” Nathan laughed, tapping the side of the camcorder.

We sat there in the quiet as the camcorder flickered out. I had known this day would come. I glanced around the circle at acquainted faces. It was impossible to ignore how much all of us had grown. We weren’t just kids with endless holidays ahead of us. Maria would be in Madrid, starting a new part-time job next month. Nathan was moving to Berlin next week. Lorenzo was busy with his band. Sophia was going off to college. Krissa was about to start a pre-college program in the States. Seb was getting a job in London instead of going to university. Chloe had found a stable internship in Paris. For me, my dad was retiring and I was going off to boarding school. 

Our new beginnings were pulling us in different directions. I couldn’t help but feel the sting of how things were shifting, how we wouldn’t be able to spontaneously meet up like this again. It wasn’t just physical distance between us. It was knowing that we couldn’t just drop everything to meet in a foreign city with the paths we were all walking now. We could no longer take our forged friendships for granted.

Maria lifted her red Solo cup. “To good memories,” she said. 

We raised our cups and sat in silence. I leaned my head on Maria’s shoulder as we sat in the suffocating pressure of reminiscence. 

“So can we get gelato now?” Nathan proposed.

We all laughed, and without saying much more, we peeled ourselves off the staircase and walked down the cobbled streets of Rome, the night air crisp against our skin. We moved in a loose, tangled formation. Despite being tossed in different directions, we were still interlinked. I was incredibly lucky to have a group of friends who made life meaningful. As we walked, our memories seemed to reflect off the worn facade of the city, as if Rome itself was determined to keep them alive.

Emmy Chen is a sophomore at Interlochen Arts Academy, MI, and a creative writing major from Hong Kong. Her work has been recognised by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and the John Locke Institute.