Tag: new year

Evolving Emotions: Resolve

EKArts 2 Comments

A much-awaited blank slate

A fresh commencement

A new beginning

 

Millions flock

With hopeful hearts

And passionate gazes

 

Purchase a membership

Begin an instrument

Preserve the coin

 

Stop smoking

Quit biting your nails

End negative self-talk

 

Do better

Be better

Live better

 

Newfound confidence

In a person, just the same

In a year, just the same

As before

 

A new package

Wrapping glimmers beneath

An optimistic bow

 

Inside a gray waste

Previous aspirations

Tossed aside

A mangled mess of guilt awry

 

Pointlessness is relative

Some cling to goals

Triumph in the struggle

And come out champions of their mind

 

Most others agree

A new year

Is a number.

 

Weightless

Baseless

Worthless

 

The moment motivation grips you

Run with it

Awaiting that square on your calendar

Is an absurd venture

 

Move your body

And achieve

 

One life to live

Why spend it waiting?

 

Why say, I’ll stop and smell the roses next year?

Looking Forward: 2021

Lucy Freeman Leave a comment

Happy Friday, everyone!

I hope you’ve enjoyed a relaxing couple of weeks off. I’m taking the time to soak up this last week with my roommates before the semester starts.

I arrived back in Ann Arbor a couple of days ago and I have to say it feels like a different place than when I moved here three and a half years ago. Businesses have closed down, the movie theaters are still dark, restaurants and bars are limited to take-out-only. When I walk down Main Street, I no longer see lines for concerts at The Ark or jazz at the Blue Llama. And while I would love to sit in Hill Auditorium and see a Gerswhin show, I know that all of this is to protect our community. 

The past semester felt dark, at times, especially being so rooted in performing arts, but this blog has been a shining light. It has allowed me to speak with some incredible people and hear hopeful stories of how the arts are surviving on campus. I’ve been in awe over the creative ways that academic departments, student organizations, and campus resources have adapted to the challenges this year has presented. They have not only found a way to continue their missions amid a global pandemic, but many have addressed students’ mental health and wellbeing as well as critical social justice issues. We have shown up for one another, and that is a beautiful thing. 

This blog is all about looking towards the future, and the new year is all about that prospect. Of course, we know that 2021 is not a fresh start that will magically solve all the world’s problems, but that doesn’t mean that we cannot also recognize the hope that this year brings. So let us hope that 2021 brings us more community, more creativity, and more compassion. I am so looking forward to having new conversations with resources and organizations on campus, and to hearing how students are “looking forward” this year. 

Til’ next week, 

Lucy

P.S. If you have any suggestions for organizations/people I should interview – please leave me a comment below!

Happy New Year!

Hannah Levine Leave a comment

A gif of the New York Times Square ball dropping on New Years from 2015.

December 31st is one of my favorite days of the year. The air is cold and crisp and it smells like winter. Christmas lights are still strung happily around bare branches of trees that look like they’ve been flipped upside down to show their roots. There’s a flutter in the air as everyone rushes about to get ready for the new year, making resolutions, setting out horderves, letting champagne chill in big buckets of ice. It’s one of the few times in our lives that we celebrate the day changing from 11:59PM to 12:00AM with kisses and cheering and song singing. And then it’s a whole new year. New possibilities. New opportunities. It’s just new all around.

A new year brings new fun and exciting resolutions that help us become the best people we want to be. I don’t actually like to make resolutions most years, though. When you make resolutions, missing a day of exercise or eating a French fry, or messing up whatever else you resolved to do, can stop your entire year from moving forward in a positive way. Instead, I like to use January 1st as the beginning of a new don’t-break-the-chain goal.

For example, say I wanted to write for at least one hour every day. Instead of resolving to write that long every day, I would create a chain. In the past when I was into cutting out paper strips and taping, I would create actual chains, but now I just use my phone or a calendar. Ah adulthood. So, by making a chain, I can mark every day that I write one hour without feeling really awful and discouraged for missing a day.

Then comes my favorite part of a chain goal. For each landmark I pass without breaking the chain, I reward myself with little prizes! If I don’t break the chain for a week, maybe I could go see a movie. If I don’t break the chain for a month, I could buy that coloring book I’ve been eyeing at the bookstore. If I don’t break the chain for two months, that’s a whole new outfit! It makes resolutions a lot more fun and much easier to continue, because if you break the chain, you just start it again.

So this December 31st, I hope you all have a wonderful day. I hope you celebrate with family and friends and eat and drink and be merry. And, if you’ve decided to change something this year, whether it’s a resolution, a don’t-break-the-chain goal, or something else entirely, I hope all of your goals make you feel like the wonderful people I know you are in 2016. Happy New Year!

5 Novels to Kick Off 2015

Erika Bell Leave a comment

This is my first post of the new year/school year, and I am excited to kick it off with something that not only is my current obsession, but something that I feel would help all of you fellow pro-2015, make-it-a-great-year people out there. Reading! I can’t imagine that anyone in this day-in-age would whine and complain about the thought of picking up a good book, outside of what is presented for us to read in the classroom. I mean come on, whether it be the classics or the new-age books of today, there’s nothing like curling up with a great book that you are excited to escape into.

It’s 2015 and everyone is all about starting afresh with new goals and new ideas of turning your life around and making it the best year yet. Well the best way to start these goals off would be to dive into some good reads within the first month of this journey. Books dedicated to inspiring you, teaching you, and entertaining you, are always helpful in planting seeds for prosperous growth. I have a 5-novel list of some of the books that I plan to crack open/have already read (before school swallows me up and spits me out), that I hope sets you all on the journey to growth and enlightenment this upcoming year.

1. The Examine Life by Stephen Grosz

The Examined Life is a book of short stories containing over 50,000 hours worth of conversation on psychological insight into individual lives. What sets this book a part is Grosz’s intentional avoidance of psychoanalytic jargon, which allow for these real stories of human behavior, mistakes, discoveries, and ideals of losing and finding ourselves, to seem real and attainable.

2. The Woman I Wanted to Be by Diane Von Furstenberg

I currently have me nose in this book by Diane Von Furstenburg, one of the most renowned fashion designers and business women of today. What sets her a part from the pack is her effervescent sense of self that stands on the idea of practicing independence, becoming one’s own best friend, and using any hard or difficult past to create the best future possible.

3. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

This classic work tells the story of an Andalusian shepherd boy who is traveling to the Egyptian pyramids to find a hidden treasure. He encounters many people who aid in his journey to find this treasure, but what he comes to discover is the idea of finding treasure within himself. Cheesy caption, great read.

4. Girl Boss

Girl Boss follows the story of Sophia Amoruso, founder and CEO of Nasty Gal retail company, and her journey from the bottom to the top. There are many cliche’s and I-already-knew-that’s present in this read, but the biggest thing to take away is the idea of there ever being impossibility of succession, couldn’t be further from the truth.

5. The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are by Brene Brown

This quintessential self-help book is one of my read-a-little-everyday reads. There are so many inspirational quotes and mantras to live by, as this book draws on classic psychological concepts of what is needed to mentally live a healthier and happier life.