Many years ago, I did away with New Year’s resolutions. I used to make them religiously. By December, there would be a long list of goals that I would look at incredulously. They ranged from the big — finish writing your novel! Run a 10K! — to the small — get rid of boxes in the garage, learn how to make pavlova! For some reason, learning how to make pavlova had been on my list for over five years. I have never learned how to make it. I blame this on high altitude. I pretty much blame all my baking missteps on high altitude. I have learned to increase the baking temperature slightly, decrease the baking powder and increase the liquid ingredients. Baking in the mountains feels like gambling: When the timer goes off, you’re never sure what you’ll see.
In recent years, in lieu of making resolutions, I have tried instead to embrace a word that I want to have shape my year. The year I started a new writing project, that word was DISCIPLINE. Another year it was NO, as I was trapped in always saying yes to things I didn’t want to do. One year, I chose WORK, as I felt I needed to keep my head down and put my job above all things. Every year, toward the end of the year, I spend weeks trying to think of the perfect word to shape the year ahead. I feel pressured to pick something that will keep me on course and help me be productive.
I am not sure when I started to think of the new year with such a sense of purpose. When I was a kid, the new year was an afterthought. Christmas was the main event. New Year’s was the holiday right before you had to go back to school, back to diagramming sentences and eating sloppy joes at lunch in the cafeteria. Above everything, January marked a month of harsh snow and relentless wind.
Every year, toward the end of the year, I spend weeks trying to think of the perfect word to shape the year ahead.
Welcoming the new year in Wyoming and in rural places across the West is quiet. There is no ball drop, few celebrations in the street. When I looked at fashion magazines and they showed party outfits, I wondered where those people were going. (I went to prom with someone who bought new jeans to wear with a borrowed sportscoat.) And yet at my parent’s home in Casper, we always observed the new year.
Ever since they moved to Wyoming in 1976, I think my parents have done what immigrants in new places have always done — found others like them. One thing I love about being an immigrant in a rural space is that you almost accept that you may never meet someone from your own country. But in turn, any new arrival is your family. It’s almost uncanny how everyone who is an “other” finds one another. And in the most unlikely places. To be honest, it mostly happens in box stores. You see others buying big bags of rice, mangos and, back in the day, phone cards to call home. My mom would march up to anyone who looked out of place and start a conversation.
Wyoming is not diverse in terms of race, but our home was a virtual United Nations in the middle of the prairie. Around our table were people from Germany, Poland, India, China, Venezuela, Sweden, Vietnam, the U.K. and France. I remember, as a kid, realizing that no one sitting around our very full Thanksgiving table was born in the U.S. And yet, we all celebrated and ate our turkey, stuffing, rolls and beans. We all were grateful for being at that table — thankful to be here, in America. We were a mishmash, and yet here we were, in rural Wyoming, together.
One of our closest family friends grew up in Peru. Before midnight on New Year’s Eve, she doles out 12 grapes for each of us to eat as the clock strikes midnight. This brings you good luck and prosperity. After that, she has us all run around the block with a suitcase to encourage travel in the coming year. Many years, I have slipped in the ice and snow, but kept running, determined to travel. I have eaten black-eyed peas, worn polka dots, smashed pomegranates and cooked lentils, all with the idea of having better luck in the new year.
But LUCK, strangely, is a word I have never picked. Instead, my words have always veered toward a more cowboy ethic — the notion that I need to work hard or to toil a bit in order to enjoy life. I wonder if that’s the Western way: To cowboy up, follow the Code of the West.
DESPAIR would be an easy pick this year. I jokingly told my husband it was a good word for our times. I think of politics, our climate, how angry people seem to be on social media. I go to bed anxiously reading the news and feeling reams of despair.
I wonder if that’s the Western way: To cowboy up, follow the Code of the West.
And yet, there is a coyote that hangs around the back of our house. I see him very infrequently. But every so often he pops up, and I see the black tip of his tail between the trees. I have watched him for years, moving about the world with purpose. I’ve seen him with a cottontail in his mouth, and wandering down the ditch, sniffing the air. I see his scat when I walk our dog. There is something about the way he lives, ruled by instinct, that I admire. He doesn’t spend time making lists or searching for words to guide him. He goes about each day living the way a wild creature is supposed to.
I know we can’t live like coyotes. We live as humans, with intention and a little grace. As 2024 drew to a close, I spent weeks thinking about what word to choose. For a while, I thought HOPE or WISH would be good. Certainly, I hope and wish for a better world. But then I thought, no, that’s not me, and that’s not the Code of the West. That code is deeply engrained in me. I have been told since I was a kid to “cowboy up” and be tough — to have grit in the face of frustration, disappointment and fear. Still, I worry that to cowboy up can mean to endure things unduly.
So my word for 2025 is MAKE. Maybe it is because I see my two small girls that I feel, more than ever, that every one of us must make something of ourselves and our time here. Something, anything, better than before. I think back to my mother walking around the supermarket, making friends and connecting. Of immigrants making luck on the windswept High Plains. And I think about the coyote, making his little urban habitat. Each of us a little out of place and making a life the best way we know how. We must make connections. We must make our communities better. Our homes better. Our environment better. Our workplaces better. We mustn’t let things deteriorate on our watch. I do not want despair to turn into doing nothing, into just tolerating. We need to be active and engaged.
I’m feeling more positive just by choosing the word. I think again about pavlova. Maybe this will be the year I actually make it.
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This article appeared in the January 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Cowboy up.”
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