January doesn’t ask me what I want.It stops me.

It cuts my momentum. Slows me down.
And suddenly I hear things I drown out the rest of the year with noise:
footsteps, breath, thoughts that don’t ask for permission.

It’s a month without scenery.
Without seasonal excuses.
Without “after this passes.”

I wake up more often with myself.

And it isn’t comfortable.

I want to be better because I feel the cracks.
Not as failures, but as places where air gets in.
Truth.
Doubt.

I lived for a long time in almost mode.
Almost honest.
Almost brave.
Almost present.

January no longer accepts “almost.”

It makes me look at my habits like old objects:
some are useful,
others just take up space,
and I carry them out of inertia, as if they define me.

What makes me want to be better isn’t hope.
It’s clarity.

That moment when I realize no one is coming to do it for me.
That time isn’t hostile, but it isn’t indulgent either.
That days pass the same way, whether I grow inside them or not.

I want to be better because I’m tired of explaining myself only to myself.
Because the exhaustion of staying the same is greater than the fear of changing something.
Because I’m starting to understand that discipline isn’t punishment, but a form of self-respect.

January doesn’t ask me to become someone else.
It asks me to stop betraying myself in small ways.

To say “no” when I want to say “no.”
To stop making promises just to avoid discomfort.
To choose what matters, even if it isn’t spectacular.

There’s a special silence in January.
It isn’t empty.
It’s full of possibilities that haven’t decided yet.

And maybe that’s my real motivation:
the fact that I can still decide who I am when no one is watching.

I don’t want a perfect year.
I want a claimed one.

A year in which I don’t run from myself.
A year in which I can say, at least sometimes:
“here, I was whole.”

January passes. I know that.
But what it leaves behind depends on me.

And this time,
I want something true to remain.