A New Year’s Day Yoga Flow was held at Mohalu Wellness in Shepherdstown, to help local residents begin the New Year on the right foot. Pictured here is Mohalu Wellness owner Lona Lozinski, leading a class. Courtesy photo

SHEPHERDSTOWN — With the arrival of the New Year has come the return of heavy advertising for gym memberships, exercise programs, healthy food services and more, all trying to draw in business from those who have made health-related New Year’s resolutions.

And, while those kind of resolutions are still very much popular, the arrival of 2025 brought with it some new kinds of resolutions, including some inspired by recent political developments.

“I have a couple of New Year’s resolutions this year,” said Mark Kohut, of Shepherdstown. “I am personally going to try to interact with more people that I don’t already know, that I didn’t last year.”

Specifically, Kohut said he hopes to better understand religious people, whose perspectives differ greatly from his own.

“I feel like I didn’t understand the election. I woke up the day after the election and said, ‘How could I be so wrong?’ Because I was quite sure she was going to win, based on all of the stuff I was following. And I follow politics pretty closely,” Kohut said, referring to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. “I didn’t understand a lot of people who didn’t see that part of the world the way I did, and I want to understand that!”

For Jan Hafer, of Shepherdstown, the continual turmoil in the world has led her to renew the New Year’s resolution that she has been making every year, for the last few years.

“Every year it’s the same — I just want to be very intentional about being kind. To me, that is number one the right thing we should do,” Hafer said. “With all of our differences, I think it would be easy to end up in a fist fight. Seriously! I think practicing kindness is phenomenally important.

“Gratitude is always the other thing I resolve to practice — be kind and be grateful for what I have,” Hafer said. “I think it’s a good thing to pause and think about these kind of things as you’re approaching each New Year.”

For mother-and-daughter Karen Armington and Erin Armington, who visited Jefferson County at the beginning of the New Year, the practice of making New Year’s resolutions has never served either of them well. And so, this fact led the New Jersey residents to make a new kind of resolution this year.

“We resolved to not do them!” Karen said, chuckling.

“I usually do one and then feel bad for not keeping it. It made me question, ‘Why am I doing this to myself?'” Erin said. “So I’m resolving not to do a New Year’s resolution.”

Erin noted that the concept behind making New Year’s resolution seems a little misguided.

“If you want to do something, you’ll do it! You don’t need a resolution to keep it,” Erin said.