With 2019 now officially underway, I am remembering how I used to plan everything I thought the year should bring. The changing of the family calendar to welcome a new year always implies that we can make a fresh start, begin anew, or design dreams different from the ones we made the previous year. But can we, or rather, should we?

For decades, I thought that I needed to design those new dreams right before the ball dropped in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. I would clean like a crazed person on December 31st and finish up countless work projects, so that the house and my overall life would feel stellar on January 1st in order to fulfill some ongoing self-promised resolution to be more organized and live a decluttered lifestyle. I remember so often waking up on January 1st exhausted and even feeling a bit down on the day that was supposed to be that fresh start I worked so hard to achieve.

What was I thinking? Clearly I wasn’t!

Aside from moving in slow motion on New Year’s Day, I realized that I had missed the little moments that make these milestone dates what they should be: special, sacred, and inspiring. I was so focused on meeting some arbitrary deadline determined by a calendar filled with pretty lighthouse pictures that I failed to see that the journey itself doesn’t stop on January 1. Instead, the first merely continues the culmination of experiences from the past year — good, bad, and in-between — that, when combined, define a life. If anything, New Year’s Day should be a time to pause and reflect on what you actually did accomplish or overcome, and be proud of both. It should also be a day, I think, to recommit yourself to being fully and completely present in the year to come.

I still feel guilty at times that my prior focus on getting everything set up just right to welcome a new year made me miss the present. I didn’t always soak in the precious love shown between my young daughters as they attempted to make cookies for the evening’s family gathering. I didn’t marvel deeply at the true creativity they displayed in rearranging their room to welcome the bunny they so wanted for Christmas. I didn’t capture fully the smiles, the joy, or their collective delight when they proudly toasted their sparkling cider as midnight arrived. Instead, I let my time be set by a store-bought calendar, and I missed the power of the present.

Never again.

Yes, New Year’s Day is a unique day, and celebrations should abound, but I no longer go into each year intent on trying to plan and predict every detail in some vain quest for perfection. I just allow myself and encourage our family to live in the moment — and only the moment — so we can immerse ourselves in the intangibles before they fade away.