New Year or Oh Dear?

New Year’s Eve
Noun
The most overrated night of the year.
Rhymes with: “Best we leave”, “I need to heave” and “get your hands off me Steve”.

Through each stage of your teens/adult life, the expectation verses reality of New Year’s Eve are poles apart. By way of example:

Teens (14 - 17)
Expectation

It is the most exciting time of the year. You have big plans to go to a friend’s bach at some local New Zealand beach that seemingly attracts only those under the age of 18 and their parents. It’s going to be epic. You are going to drink way more than your parents say you are allowed (most likely anything in a can that has way too higher standard drinks to volume ratio #smirnoffdoubleblack) and you are seeing your boyfriend/girlfriend that you have been texting for months on end but have not actually seen since the high school disco where you exchanged numbers.

Reality

When the time comes, you get too excited, start drinking way too early, throw up somewhere in daylight and in public before comering out and missing the countdown. The following morning you wake up with a cracking headache and to find that your “bf/gf” kissed your mate. Epic.

Late teens/early 20’s
Expectation

You take it up a notch and festivals/concerts/raves become the theme. You are old enough to drink and drive with passengers (but not at the same time, obviously). This means you can go with a group of friends without needing parental guidance. Anyway, because you live away from home most of the year at University or in a flatting situation, your parents don’t feel as responsible for you as they once did. The goal becomes wearing as little as possible so that you can show off your shredded bod and tan courtesy of the fifth term (because surely the length of time you get off for your summer holiday qualifies?). Cotton on provides the slithers of material. You spend the day either jumping/swaying/bobbing to the music and if you are really cool, get the best seats in the house by piggy back riding on some strong shredded dude’s shoulders.

Reality

Although one could argue the minimalistic concert dress code is due to the hot summer days, that argument is flawed. When it is teeming down with rain, 70% do not cover up any more skin than normal, with the remaining 30% wearing white t-shirts over their bikini tops #whitetshirtcomp. You struggle to show off your dance moves because you are a squashed sardine in a sandwich of sweaty drunk people and, more often than not, you are on the receiving end of someone’s erratic octopus arms.

While you may get a chance on the shoulder seats and feel invincible for a few seconds, it doesn’t always end well. What goes up must come down and the once strong man becomes a reckless one and the once graceful lady becomes a sloppy one (#faceplant). To top it all off, you find that you have spent all of your holiday savings in one week on bottled water which costs $8.00 a pop.

Late 20’s/early 30’s
Expectation

At this stage of life, you either have friends with children or children of your own. If you are a first-time mum you are excited to get your fellow mums around. You chose something low key like camping at the river because you are blissfully unaware of what that involves and want to be a #coolmum. You organise the tents, portacots and every other household item known to man/woman (#genderequality) to make it work. You put the children down early so that you can enjoy each other’s company/share parenting stories into the night.

Reality

Again, it fails to live up to expectations. One of the children gets eaten alive by mosquitoes. An older child who was meant to be supervising the babies while the mums were doing shots in one of the back tents allowed the young toddlers hook into the blue cheese platter resulting in sore tummies and nightmare children. One of the other mums who hasn’t drunk all year let herself go, threw up in her hat and is so embarrassed that she blames her baby who is playing cheerfully nearby and leaves with her husband. Everyone else is too tired from everyday parenting to make it to 10.00pm.

Not only are the expectations of the New Year’s Eve celebrations a lot different to reality, but so too are those pertaining to New Year resolutions.

Every person, everywhere and at some point in their lives:
Expectation

1. I’m going to abstain from alcohol for one month.

2. I’m going to eat clean this year.
*Caveat: We will start it when we get back to work because there are too many leftovers that I want to enjoy.

3. I’m going hit the gym hard.

4. I’m going to have smoothies for breakfast each day.

Reality

As soon as you start work again and things get stressful, that immediately goes out of the window. You crack into the wine and Christmas treats as soon as you get home from work. With every slip up your mindset becomes “I will start tomorrow”.

Smoothies start off well, largely because your body requires only top-ups. When your body flushes out the weeks’ worth of overeating, that changes. You realise that despite getting all of your nutrients in by 8.30am, your ravenous by 10.00am and hook into the biscuits in the morning tea room at work.

The gym grind happens for a few days but because of the aforementioned failures, you don’t think there is any point carrying on and cancel your membership.

Every first-time mother, everywhere, at some point before their child’s birth:
Expectation

1. I’m going to get back to my previous size as soon as possible after giving birth.

2. I’m going to be #mumgoals. Everything my child eats is going to be homemade and they are certainly not going to have any screen time until they are around the age of four.

3. I’m going to do all I can to be environmentally conscious. I am definitely using the old school cloth nappies. Mum did it with four children so I can too.

Reality

Because of the sleep deprivation, exhaustion and depletion of most things required to function as a human being, you fail at each and every one. You eat everything unhealthy because you need that sugar fix. You CBF cooking. When you guilt trip yourself into cooking, you freeze it, forget about and soon decide that pre-made pouches are life.

It quickly becomes apparent that getting anything done when your child is not sleeping is a difficult task. You soon change your mindset to suit yourself and think up every justification you can to survive. By way of illustration:

1.    A little bit of screen time won’t hurt right? Technology is today’s world. I would hate for her to miss out.

2.    You use up too much water when washing cloth nappies. They take too much time. I could be spending that with my child instead.

It’s a wrap

So, what can we take from all of this?

1.    Staying home for New Year’s leaves little room for error.  It must be the way of the future.

2.   Making realistic resolutions means you do not set yourself up to fail. My main resolution for 2020 is to keep my child alive. The rest are negotiable.