I spent New Years Eve Alone and I feel fine

December 31st, 2024. My roommate has gone out to a small get together with their friends, leaving myself, and their dog Charlie to hang out for the night.

Like clockwork, my mom texts me in the evening asking me what my plans are for the night. For a week and a half, I had been intentionally vague about what I planned to do for New Year’s Eve, but with only a few hours until 2025, my reckoning approached.

The thing is, I half-heartedly tried to make plans earlier in December for NYE. I texted a few of my local friends to see what they were up to, but everyone else had plans. When I moved into my own place at the tail end of 2022, I hosted a big New Year’s Eve party for 2023. For 2024, only a few friends were available to hang out. And with everyone busy, I came to accept that this was going to be a holiday I observed alone.

Of course, I wasn’t actually alone. I had Charlie with me and he was a delight. However, for the rest of this piece, I want to talk about loneliness and solitude, so for brevity and conciseness' sake, I’m going to say that I spent this past New Year’s Eve alone. Because, as you can tell by this lengthy preamble, I love being brief and concise.

New Year’s Eve is a weird holiday, but in a nice way. Most holidays have their roots in religion and spirituality, but New Year’s Eve is almost a mathematically-based holiday. Of course, the actual origins of the Gregorian calendar is rooted in religion as well. However, in the modern age, it’s essentially celebrated worldwide. This is despite other New Years being observed throughout the Gregorian calendar year, like the Chinese New Year or Yom Kippur (Jewish New Year). In a culture and world that’s becoming evermore siloed, there’s something nice about everyone observing the passage of time together in a concrete fashion.

So I’m not some kind of New Year’s Grinch. I like the holiday and didn’t even break into anyone’s home. The reason I spent it alone was fully on me, and honestly, a fitting reflection of my 2024.

For a myriad of reasons, 2024 was a big year. Not just for me, of course, but for the world. Politically, economically and culturally, I feel like so many of us spent 2024 on edge. If it wasn’t for one reason, it was for another. The world is fundamentally in a different place than it was 365 days ago, and so am I. This is the part where I get to/have to talk about myself.

I expend a lot of energy thinking. That’s absolutely not to say I’m smart, just that I’m unable to turn my brain off for any meaningful amount of time. During my spare time, I get my serotonin fix from writing stories, drafting business plans for establishments that will never exist, and dissecting/theoretically restructuring social systems. To be honest, while I love these hobbies, they’re mentally exhausting. The tough part is that I spent all my dopamine/motivation thinking and planning, so that when it comes time to sit down and execute, I’m tapped out. Usually, that results in me spending hours with a less-thought intensive activity like watching YouTube or playing video games— sometimes both at the same time.

Something I came to accept about myself this year is that I’m neurodivergent, with my special brain cocktail comprising of a mix of autism and ADHD. Like the rest of my body, these are inherent parts of me and denying them does no one any good. I also have depression and anxiety, so managing all of those factors can make it hard to keep all the good chemicals in my brain at healthy levels. I’m not smart enough to dive into the chemical interplay, but I know my own experiences. I have a hard time transitioning between contexts, even if they’re contexts I’m familiar with. Leaving my home to go to my parents can take a lot of motivation and mental planning, because each step expends energy. Putting on my shoes, starting the car, and driving all take significant motivation to make happen, which does not leave much left for socializing. But by planning ahead, I can mentally prepare and alleviate some of the energy “costs” that everyday tasks incur.

So to function the best I can, I plan. Sometimes it's the day, sometimes it's the week, sometimes it's just a few hours. Regardless, the point is to give myself the time to prepare and the tools to hold myself accountable so I can hit my goals. Planning helps me get into a flow, but when that plan is interrupted, I find myself riddled with anxiety.

Even something as simple as being invited out for dinner a few hours beforehand can cause a spiral. Did I plan on something else for dinner? Will I have enough energy to socialize? Who else is going to be there? What time will I be home? And what social obligations are associated with the invite? And if I say that I can’t go, will they be mad at me? What if they don’t invite me again? And then by the time I even try to concoct a response, I’ve expended all my energy worrying and planning around the event that it’s usually easier to graciously decline.

This is the primary reason I like inviting people over to my place. It’s an environment that I know and can control. I don’t have to worry about the physical transition between spaces and can focus on defrosting my social muscles ahead of guests arriving. And at the end of the night and I’ve given everything I have, I can go to bed and recharge immediately. Plus, because I’m hosting, I can give myself as much lead time as I need to prep.

I feel like I need to clarify that I’m not a hermit. I go out into the world. I see my friends, I go on dates (sometimes), I see movies, go out for food, shop in person, etc. Regular people things. It just takes so much energy that by the end of the day, I just need to turn my brain off and recharge. That doesn’t leave much time or energy for some of my other hobbies, but y’know, a balance is needed.

For most of my life, I told people I was an extrovert, because I was chatty and talkative— usually in school or at work (when I worked in a physical location). But I’ve come to realize that it's rare for me to be energized by other people. I’ve come to realize that I am, in fact, an introvert.

Accepting that I’m an introvert changed my relationship with being alone. Yes, sometimes the loneliness is overwhelming and I feel isolated in the world. It happens to all of us, I imagine. But often, being on my own feels empowering. My energy is exclusively mine to expend, and no one can ruin my flow except for myself. My body doesn’t feel anxious being in a “foreign” environment. My brain doesn’t have to fret about social cues or controlling my tone of voice to be more palatable to neurotypicals. It’s nice. It’s peaceful. And it gives me the time to work on myself and my projects.

Some people say it's sad to spend New Year’s Eve alone, and maybe part of me did want one of my friends to stop by. But spending NYE alone wasn’t sad. From an outside observer, was it boring? Maybe! But it’s not like I’m Squidward, wistfully watching Spongebob and Patrick play outside. I was able to sketch out my goals for 2025, organize my room, and take some time to rest after a long ass year. It was peaceful, and I woke up on January 1st 2025 ready to take on the year.

If I were to attach a theme to my 2024, I would say above everything else, the theme was “Acceptance.” I’ve come to accept our world as it is, and my place in it. I’ve come to accept people as they are, avoiding misattribution or projecting feelings onto them. I’ve come to accept that there are things outside my control, and I’ve come to accept that change is the only constant. And of course, I’ve accepted myself. I’ve accepted that this is my life, and I need to play by the rules that my brain has laid out for me. It’s because of that acceptance that I’m able to approach 2025 with realistic goals for self-improvement, like joining a regularly-scheduled social group or exploring more of my city.

I enjoy what I enjoy, and like spending my time pursuing what I like to pursue. But I also accept that I need to create space for myself and treat my body and mind with grace. I spent NYE doing exactly that— giving myself time to rest, going easy on the brain, and picking away at things that fill me with satisfaction. 2024 was the year of acceptance. In 365 days, I’ll know what the theme of 2025 was.

The bottom line:

I am not ashamed of who I am.

MH