How to navigate the December 'should-haves'

Are you letting loose, or stuck fretting over unmet goals?

We have, to quote my friend’s Danish fiancé, reached the Friday of the year.

In theory, it’s a time of winding down in anticipation of 2025. It’s the annual equivalent of that Friday afternoon feeling where the following week feels like a distant, foreign prospect; all challenges and responsibilities delegated to Future You. No point doing anything now – it’s Christmas in less than a fortnight! Pass me a mince pie while I fake-type on my laptop and covertly do my last-minute present shopping.

At least, that’s how it could be, if I were to grant myself the grace of letting go.

Trouble is, I’m not quite there yet. Yes, I’ve listened to my Spotify Unwrapped round-up, attended two Christmas parties and yesterday inhaled a Pret turkey sandwich (3/5 stars), but I still don’t feel like I’ve earned the grand finale yet. The intention is there. I want to go gently into that good night [out at a bar in Soho], and the festive indulgence has certainly started, but beneath that there’s still a whisper of should.

What’s worse is that it’s my least favourite flavour: more should haves, rather than shoulds. Which feels more or less synonymous with regret, at this point. Because what can I realistically achieve by January 1? It seems counter-intuitive to start anything afresh, in the same way that starting a new work project on a Friday afternoon feels futile. But the undercurrent of panic remains. Namely, I haven’t done the thing I said I was going to this year.

I’m not the only one. I organised a get-together for some fellow journalists last night, and much of our conversation centred around where we hadn’t quite got to yet. The books we’d vowed to finish writing this year, the early marathon training programme that never happened, the freelance careers still not taking flight, the jobs or commissions we’re still to secure, the unideal living or romantic situations that remain the same as this time last year.

Or else, the specific goals that haven’t been met: 'Woman Checks Her 2024 New Years’ Resolutions Because She Loves to Hurt Her Own Feelings’, reads the satirising headline of the Reductress post currently circulating on my Instagram Stories feed.

I don’t like regret. So, instead, I’m making peace with the fact I’m going to wake up as roughly the same person in 2025, give or take the ravages of three weeks of Pinot Noir and turkey, rather than the stronger (physically, emotionally, motivationally) version I’d fantasised about this time last year. Here’s my threefold approach:

Being grateful for what I already have

‘No major updates’ will be my party-line when catching up with friends and family this December. While not particularly useful as conversational fodder, what I fail to appreciate is that it’s a good thing, too. I liked the life I had this time last year, and I continue to like it now.

No, I haven’t met milestones in some of the areas I would have liked to (something I berate myself with in, say, my yoga practice, that elusive handstand goal seeming further away than ever). Nor have I met the love of my life. Work projects remain unfinished and/or paused. But I’m also still doing the things and seeing the people that bring me joy. And isn’t that something?

I’ve spent this year reading, doing yoga, listening to my favourite podcasts, experimenting with new recipes and maintaining close relationships with my friends and family. And no, I don’t have much to show for it – but why should I? It’s what philosopher Dr James Carse describes as an infinite game. The goal of an infinite game is to keep playing, not to win. It’s about valuing the continuation of an ongoing process over reaching a set finite milestone.

My Year Unwrapped of personal achievements

Still – I know that somewhere in my subconscious, I’m berating myself up for ‘not moving forward’. But that’s just what I’m telling myself (yes – the speech marks indicate my inner critic).

The weight of what I haven’t done feels so momentous, at times, that I forget what I have done. It’s that classic negativity bias, the common trick of our minds that makes us more likely to recall the bad, rather than the good. I’m sure we all know people with a superhuman ability to buck the trend, but I’m not one of them.

If only Spotify’s software engineers could enter my brain and pull out some of this year’s highlights to remind me. As they can’t (yet?) do that, I’ve taken the manual approach instead. Here’s what I’m proud of: a mixture of big and small things.

I’ve started a neighbourhood book club, something I’d wanted to do in the past but been too scared to. I completed the Curtis Brown six-month writing course. I’ve made a number of new friends, predominantly but not exclusively from said writing course (befriending a couple of my neighbours, for instance, was a wonderful development this year). I’ve worked in-house at a couple of different companies, painted the inside of my front door yellow, and mastered boiling eggs in an air-fryer. All adding to the rich tapestry of life.

Some of this was earlier in the year, so it had slipped my mind (the early effects of the Pinot & turkey diet haven’t helped, either), and much of it will only be meaningful to me. But it’s worthy of acknowledgement, if only to remind myself of how far I’ve come in my own estimation.

Unseasonal goal-setting

This time last year, I drove myself to near-insanity after setting myself a personal challenge I dubbed 12 Days of Pitching. As a freelance journalist, this meant pitching 12 feature ideas, to 12 different publications. It worked well, in that I gained a couple of commissions – but I ended up exhausted.

This year, I’ve taken a different approach. Rather than racing against time before the end of December, I’m setting gentle goals for early next year. A creative writing friend and I have planned a manuscript-swap for a date in January, which is a daunting yet cosy project to commit to over the coming weeks. I’m researching Spanish immersion courses (an elaborate way to switch off, post-manuscript swap). I’ve also committed to my first run abroad, but while my friends are running half-marathons – which I have done a couple of times in the past – I’ve taken the easier 5K option, reasoning that I don’t want to do the hard hard thing this time around.

The real goal-setting, for me, takes place over the Twixmas period between Christmas and New Year. As long-term readers of this newsletter will know, it’s a period of time I take seriously for reflecting on the past year and planning the year ahead. So that’s still to come. But these tentative plans for 2025 at least take the pressure off of this year – reduce the feeling that 2024 has to be tied up neatly with a red velvet bow.

And in the meantime, I’m trying to embrace the festive Friday feeling. Because it is a bit fun, isn’t it? I definitely don’t get invited out this much all year round. It’s playtime for my puppy-like inner extrovert. If there’s one should I’m putting on myself, it’s that I should say yes a bit more, and enjoy it while it lasts.

Reading…

For my December book club meet-up, I’m reading The Safekeep by Yael van de Woudren, which I discovered after attending the Booker Prize shortlist readings event at the Southbank Centre (which I wrote about here). I know all novels contain multitudes, but this one crams a lot into 270 pages: exploring the themes of loneliness, queer romance and home, all underpinned by van de Woudren’s subtle humour and irony. If this year’s Booker Prize winner Orbital doesn’t float your boat spacecraft, then I’d highly recommend this one.

Watching…

As some of you will know, I got rid of my television this time last year – which is generally a liveable situation, apart from when Sharon Horgan’s ‘Bad Sisters’ returns for a second season. I binged the first three episodes while visiting my parents earlier this week, and it’s as gripping as ever. Also, my GOD the newcomer character of Angelica, played by Fiona Shaw, is brilliantly-malevolent.

Listening…

To Kirsty Young, possibly the nation’s most-loved broadcaster, on the latest episode of Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail.