Your New Year's Appointments
Because the art of romanticizing your life deserves a place in your calendar.
The New Year doesn’t need to arrive with fireworks to feel momentous. Sometimes it slips in like the first pop of a champagne cork—soft, sparkling, full of promise. It’s the fizz in your glass, the thrill of a clean start, the luxury of fresh pages waiting to be filled. Think candlelight, bubbles rising, a pen hovering over a brand-new journal. These aren’t resolutions (too stiff, too joyless), but appointments—with intention, with pleasure, with becoming. A year designed not through deprivation, but through balance, beauty, and just enough discipline to make the delight sweeter.
The Gentle Beginning
Open Pinterest with a sweeping comfort film murmuring in the background—Pride and Prejudice or the Sex and the City movie is perfect for this. Let your mind wander. Save textures, rituals, colors, moods.
Treat yourself to a beautiful new journal. Blank or gratitude-led, but enticing enough that you want to reach for it. Decide on your annual devotion—perhaps The Daily Stoic, The Book of Alchemy, or a simple daily check-in written in your own hand. Pair it with a gentle app like Joy 101, something that nudges without nagging.
Nourishment (Without Punishment)
Make a shopping list for Whole Foods—or reset thoughtfully by flirting with a new diet practice like ProLon, vegan recipes, or fresh squeezed juices if that suits your body and season.
Remember: New Year culture loves restraint and withholding. You don’t have to. So plan one decadent night for the back half of the month after you’ve had your reset from the holidays. Balance is the point.
New Year’s Eve, Proper
Pour good champagne—no prosecco!
Cue Auld Lang Syne (Ingrid Michaelson’s version is quietly perfect, while Duke Ellington’s is a hummy hit).
Keep a 5:00 pm reservation, then come home early, slip into your best jammies, and let the night soften as you giggle along with Anderson and Andy.
Hosting friends casually? Try this easy breezy appetizer for noshing.
The Year, Lightly Structured
Set a reading goal that feels nourishing, not punishing:
One fiction selection
One biography selection
One self-help or spiritual selection
Choose one topic to learn deeply—read the book, watch the documentary, let curiosity lead!
Set SMART goals (yes, they’re scary. yes, they work):
Health/Mind/Spirit
Personal Growth
Wealth
Professional
Relationships
Hobbies
YES! Hobbies are so important. Follow Professor Marina Cooley for more deets on this.
Decide one boundary you are done negotiating.
List one thing to look forward to each month, à la Jenna Bush Hager—anticipation is its own form of joy.
How You’ll Live Inside the Year
Schedule a slow-moving workout for January 1st—nothing punishing, everything kind. Perhaps an elongated stretch and meditation that you can do while wearing your pajamas.
Pro tip! If you have the American Express Platinum Card, you have access to Equinox+. They have tons of meditations, stretches, and sound baths.
Choose weekly movement you genuinely love. Something you will look forward to; not dread.
Pick one hobby to return to or begin again.
Plan monthly gathering themes—simple, thoughtful reasons to cultivate your relationships.
And above all: sleep.
It is the cornerstone of health and happiness. You need it.
And if you’re thinking yes, but not me—you especially.
