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The Misleading Magic of a Clean Slate

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THE MISLEADING MAGIC OF A CLEAN SLATE

By: Haley Rose  |  January 9, 2024


For years, mid-December would find me hunched over my computer, meticulously crafting my resolutions for the year ahead. I was convinced that success could be conquered with enough planning, strategy, and sheer willpower. Armed with The Four-Hour Work Week, the Pareto Principle, biohacking, and whatever shiny new optimization method the local bookstore had on display, I pursued every trick that promised to launch me to some imagined next level of greatness.

lived for it—the intoxicating magic of a clean slate. I’d envision my future self: glowing, effortlessly organized, nodding in approval as I reviewed my list of goals. Fluent in French, a Pilates prodigy, and somehow radiating competence from every pore, this imagined version of me was the crown jewel of my productivity machine. My resolutions were crafted with military precision, and I broadcasted my so-called "success strategies" to anyone who’d listen, as though I were some kind of self-made productivity prophet.

Good grief, I must have been insufferable.

And then, one year, something happened—something wonderful and terrifying (and yes, yet another product of fastidious planning): I got pregnant.

And everything went perfectly nothing went as planned. 


My pregnancy floored me and left me violently ill. Not just for the first trimester but for the whole joyful journey. I still recoil when I think about it. And as if that wasn't enough, after 7 months of nauseating torture, my son arrived 8.5 weeks early, a tiny, wailing raisin* that one friend lovingly described as "the angriest premature baby she'd ever seen." He lived in the NICU for what felt like forever, swaddled in wires and beeping monitors. When he finally came home, he cried. All he did was cry. For a long, long time. He was so small and so determined to let the universe know about it. And in those moments, I felt so small too. I felt like wailing, like my tiny shriveled grape of a son. 


Now, don't worry, that time is behind us—he's a healthy, happy, plump grape of a child and hasn't cried since, as if he got it all out in those first few months. But that relentless, uncontrollable stretch of time obliterated almost two years of carefully manufactured resolutions.

And in doing so, it taught me something that only a terrible pregnancy and an outrageously stubborn baby could: We are delusional to think we can control life and tie it up with a neat, minimalist bow


I know, I know, doesn't that make you uncomfortable? Me, too. Deeply so. I viscerally understand the crisp and satisfying feeling of belief in one's ability to control our lives, the reassurance one feels from envisioning a more capable future you, one who meal preps and knows how to fold a fitted sheet.

But life doesn't work like that. Life isn't a bullet journal or a motivational spreadsheet. It's messy and unpredictable. It laughs at your five-year plan by lobbing an existential curveball your way. Sometimes in the form of a job loss, a family tragedy, a mental health crisis, a screaming baby—or some disastrous combination of it all. 

That period in my life was hard. Hard and messy and dark and beautiful (retrospectively, of course). It completely reshaped my understanding of preparedness, or more so, one's ability to prepare for the gloriously unpredictable nature of being human. It humbled me in a way hard times humble us all, in a way no one really wants but sometimes we so desperately need.


Does that mean I've given up planning? Of course not. This year, I'll still write resolutions, but a little differently. I'll scribble them in pencil, lightly, knowing that life doesn't care about my grand schemes. I'll make more small, human resolutions—less about becoming a new person, more about becoming this person, just with a bit more tenderness. This year, I plan to stumble into January with the softness of someone who's not chasing perfection but someone who resolves to try and forgive themselves when they inevitably don't.

And if, by this time next year, I've accomplished nothing on my list, I hope to laugh at how gloriously human this whole process is.

After all, becoming better isn't a checkbox—it's a wonderfully messy work in progress.

*fruity description courtesy of the aforementioned Emma




Haley Rose is a new mom who usually feels like she has no idea what she’s doing, and has too many things to do. In a world of never-ending checklists, she’s trying to live at a more glacial pace. 

When she’s not being a mom, a wife, a dog mom, and attempting to be a decent human, she works in spatial computing, a total niche, which is why she no longer explains what she does to people. You might also find her in the garage sizing up her tool belt and trying to figure out how to use her laser level.


More from this issue:

Goal Digger: Balancing It All in 2025 HERE >>

Design Diaries:
 Fresh Start: Your Family’s Guide to a Home Renovation in the New Year HERE >> 

The Nurtured Mommy: New Year, New You HERE >> 

Oversubscribed: The Misleading Magic of a Clean Slate HERE >> 

Blissful Health & Harmony: The Power of Fasting for Hormonal Balance and Natural Conception HERE >>