Norway, Sandviken Village in the Snow, by Claude Monet
Every app, from my Spotify to my Duolingo (for some reason), gives me a clear and defined end-of-the-year compilation. I now know what artists I listened to on repeat, what social media content I shared throughout the year, and how many Spanish lessons I took. I am now ready to start the new year. It’s a neat little mix of memories that almost pushes me to view them as a thing of the past and look to the future where my music, content, and foreign language lessons (once again, why?) are still a mystery.
I don’t think these end-of-year wraps are anything new. They are just utilising an age-old concept of looking back at the memories of the past (with heavy use of AI, of course). This concept introduced a couple of years ago, gives a brand more visibility while entertaining the users and giving them something to look forward to. In the last months, I must have discussed the predictions for my Spotify wrapped at least once a week. Before technology made looking back at the highlights of our year more accessible, we would make albums, edit videos, and go over our journal entries to get a sense of what the last 365 days were like. A friend of mine and I have a New Year’s tradition to go to a department store (that serves free champagne on the day) and go over how we spent our year together. Granted, it started as a trauma-bonding ritual of discussing everything we went through, but it became a fun activity. I am trying to say that looking back and packaging our memories by year is almost in our nature. It helps us organise our minds, think of important events that shaped us and prepare for the things to come. When packaging our memories, though, we can’t help but think of them as past experiences no longer relevant to our future. Now that we have lived through them, we can start anew. Sure, we will go back to them sometimes to extract a memory or a helpful lesson, but we still view our time on this earth as periodical with sayings like ‘New Year, New Me’ cheering us along.
This clean slate mentality, further supported by every compilation ever, makes us believe we can reinvent ourselves yearly. Well, I have a couple of issues with that. First, unless you have been working on yourself for a while and your plan for the new year is to continue working on yourself, you will not wake up on the morning of January 1st as a brand new person. More likely, you will wake up with a heavy hangover, make yourself some food and watch movies in bed, trying your best to stop the hanxiety from creeping in. Secondly, why do you think you need to reinvent yourself at all? You’re pretty great as is. I’m just assuming here, though. If you have it on good authority that you’re not, then, yeah, do the work.
We spend time writing New Year’s resolutions and then get mad at ourselves for breaking them; we begin to view the start of a year as some grand beginning when all it really should be is a calendar year changing. Who can blame us, though? The allure of starting fresh is undeniable. I have caught myself once or twice thinking how excited I am for the year to change so I can begin again. I enjoy the holiday festivities as much as the next person. I am overjoyed by the sight of a Christmas tree and participate in Secret Santa every year (even though I don’t celebrate Christmas, lol). And I also sometimes fall victim to the idea of starting fresh when the clock strikes twelve. I write my wish for the New Year on a piece of paper, I burn it, put the ashes into my champagne glass and chug it happily as the clock counts down to midnight (if you are confused by this tradition, don’t worry, I am too, but we do it every year). When writing down my wishes, I try to aim for something more abstract since the point of the tradition is not for my wish to come true; it’s to have fun.
I think our lives should be looked at as a whole. It is a line with ups and downs, highs and lows, but an uninterrupted line nonetheless. In the haze of resolutions and 200 different filters that jokingly give us our 2025 predictions, we often forget that the day after New Year’s will arrive just like the day before it did. We will be just like before (maybe a little more bloated from all the food and drinks). And that’s a good thing. We will have every day of the year and our lives to grow and improve, start fresh when we need to, and turn a new page without forgetting about the rest of the book. We don’t need to focus on the one day to pack all the change and growth into because that is just setting an impossible task for yourself. Even though it feels nice to look back on our year, we should not look back at it and immediately close the door.
And when it comes to end-of-year compilations, we should remember what they are as we watch them. They’re not some magical insight into how good or bad our year was or points to use in comparison with how our next year should be. They are simply fun little slideshows. They might provide some information on what artists you were obsessed with at some point or what music you listened to during a specific event in your life and make you look back and reflect on that time, but at their core, they are not much more than that. These slideshows, by the way, were definitely AI-generated, considering how bad they have become compared to last year. I guess replacing people who used to make the wrapped videos with AI did make a difference (I’m looking at you, Spotify).
In conclusion, grow and evolve all year round, enjoy your fun New Year’s traditions, and use the compilations of your music, photos, and language (honestly, I still don’t get why) for fun, not reflection.
P.S. This story came from my heart and genuine frustration with people comparing their Spotify wrapped to actual insight into the highs and lows of their year. If I am telling you things you already know, then just enjoy the messy structure of this story. I have been hungover for five days, so go easy on this one. Writing is like Alka Seltzer and electrolytes for me.