By: Hawi Bussa
The new year always sneaks in quietly, no matter how much we prepare for it. One day it’s the last page of the calendar, the next day we’re suddenly in Meskerem, and people are talking about fresh starts and resolutions as if at the snap of a finger, they will suddenly change everything. I’ve made those resolutions before, lists scribbled with determination, promises to wake up earlier, to be more disciplined, to somehow become a completely different version of myself. And I’ve broken them too, sometimes before the ink was even dry.
What I’ve learned is that resolutions rarely stick because they’re more about who we want to be seen as than who we actually are. They demand perfection, but they don’t leave much room for humanity. Life, on the other hand, is full of interruptions, detours, and days when simply showing up is enough. So instead of resolutions, I’ve started leaning into something gentler, something that feels more honest: taking inventory.
For me, taking inventory isn’t about big declarations. It’s about pausing long enough to really look at the year behind me. What worked? What didn’t? What parts of myself did I grow into, and what parts do I keep running away from? Sometimes that reflection is uncomfortable. I don’t always love what I see when I hold the mirror up. But I’ve realized that naming the truth, even the messy parts, is better than pretending. It’s like cleaning out a closet; you can’t make space for what you need if you won’t admit what’s actually sitting there.
The beautiful thing about inventory is that it doesn’t ask us to be superhuman. It doesn’t expect us to flip our lives upside down in a single month. It just asks us to be real. To admit that yes, maybe we’ve been stuck in old patterns. To notice the small wins we usually skip over, the way we handled something better than we would have last year, and the quiet ways we’re growing even when no one else sees it. It reminds us that progress doesn’t always look like fireworks. Sometimes it looks like finally setting a boundary or finding peace where there used to be chaos.
Every new year is an invitation, not a performance. We don’t need resolutions to prove anything. We just need to know ourselves better, to be honest about where we are so we can choose where we’re going. Taking inventory is simply a way of checking in with your own soul, of saying, This is who I am right now, and this is where I hope to grow.
So maybe this year, instead of a long list of promises that may or may not survive the first few weeks, we give ourselves the gift of reflection. Maybe we sit with our lives the way we’d sit with a close friend, without judgment, with kindness, with curiosity. Because the truth is, change doesn’t come from a resolution on a calendar. It comes from knowing ourselves deeply, and deciding, little by little, who we’re becoming.
