Yup. I’m that girl on New Year’s Eve. The one who broke her phone to the point of no return. The same phone that has the only copies of the pictures my girlfriends and I took. I reached out to people that I probably shouldn’t have (sorry if you fell victim to this). I was asleep in bed before the ball even dropped for reasons that are still a mystery to me. I got dolled up. Wore a new dress that, to be honest, I looked fabulous in, just to share the “big moment of ringing in the new year” with my pillow and teddy bear. I was dead asleep before midnight even hit. Gee, being 23 has never looked so good.

I’m a digital nutcase so the thought of losing everything I have stored on my phone is traumatizing. But, like always, I try to take a lesson out of these plain stupid situations I find myself in the middle of.

You are not defined by the date on the calendar: I do not believe for a second that your year is dictated by what you do or who you are with on January 1st. I brought in 2012 with a now ex-boyfriend and a group of people I barely knew. And 11 out of the next 12 months was spent without those people. And they were an amazing, exciting and extremely memorable 11 months.

One of the only surviving pictures. Thanks, Instagram.

You have the choice to live your year, your month, your week, even your day, however you choose. I laugh at everyone who says, “new year, new me!”. If it takes a giant ball dropping down a big tower and tons of people gathered together yelling “Happy New Year” in unison to make you realize that you’re a “new person”, then I think you need a wake up call. But that’s just my own blunt opinion.

For now, I’ll hang out and hope that my iPhone, which is now submerged in a bowl of rice, will magically revive itself before I head to AT&T at 10 a.m. and drop an unnecessary amount of money on a new one. Until then, think about what kind of life you want to live. Not just what kind of year. 2013 and every year after will only be as good as the effort you put in each and every day.