All around you are family, friends, and strangers using the excuse of a new January 1st to restart, relaunch, or reboot their lives. You may doubt their sincerity, their dedication, or their grasp on reality, but you’re not in charge of their story arcs. For whatever reason, they’ve decided their “series” needs to begin again from scratch. Some of them aren’t so sure about what they’re doing, but they firmly believe the results will justify the scheme. Some of them will be wrong, but it’s possible a few of them may be on to something.

What if they’re right? What if it works and they win? Can you steal their idea after the fact and hope no one notices? And how can tell when it’s your turn to end your current numbering and start over from #1? Check your life for one or more of the following warning signs:

* Situations and struggles have become so predictable, what once took you twenty-two minutes to solve now takes only two.

* The world around you seems poorly drawn, as if the architect of your universe is distracted and rushing to get each day over with.

* Every other day you’re butting heads with the same arch-nemesis again and again and again, as if there’s nothing better for you to do.

* Your best friends nag you about how your life has become too boring to follow, and keep writing long essays about how they’d make your life 100 times better if they were in charge.

* Your last few decades’ worth of continuity have become so convoluted that you now have multiple conflicting memories of singular events, all impossible to reconcile with each other.

* You find yourself saddled against your will with one or more lame, whiny sidekicks.

* You have a tiny, hardcore group of supporters who think you’re winning at life, but deep down you wish you could sacrifice them all, sell out, and appeal to a much wider, younger, shallower, less discerning audience instead.

* Everyone else around you is doing it, and hopping on bandwagons is cool.

You may be wrong, but maybe not. Perhaps it is time to relaunch your life with an all-new [Your Name Here] #1. When crafted with proper care, #1s can be the most enjoyable parts of a series. Living as if you’re on issue #705 of your old life is nowhere near as exciting as living out a #1, complete with new faces, new scenery, new designs, and new supporters crawling out of the woodwork because #1s can be such a sound investment, whereas #705 would’ve been tedious business as usual with no anticipated resale value in their narrow-minded presumption.

However, remember that magic this powerful comes with a price. If you’re absolutely insistent on kick-starting a relaunch no matter how gratuitous it may be, you also need to realize the possibility of any number of consequences, not all of them good and pleasing. Be prepared to cope with one or more of the following:

* The person looking back at you in the mirror may be a completely new face. This can be good or bad, but it will do you no good to stand there and complain about how much better your old face was.

* Your revised personal history may be simpler and streamlined, but will stretch back no further than five years. Everything before that will be a dull haze until present-day trauma requires it to be filled in. The formerly heart-warming events of your childhood may now be grimmer and grittier than they were at the time.

* Your old enemies may become harder to handle than they used to be, or replaced by more intense new enemies.

* Your close personal friends may arbitrarily change race, gender, and/or planet of origin.

* The world around you may seem poorly drawn, as if the new architect of your universe is an eighteen-year-old rookie with deadline issues and no work ethic.

* Control of your destiny may be randomly, temporarily ceded to the cosmic equivalent of Rob Liefeld, Brett Ratner, or whoever ruined Veronica Mars in season three. Once that messy period of your new era is past, full recovery will require a miracle.

* Your life may screech to a halt every five or six days when you become embroiled in a “crossover” that requires you and six people you barely know to deal with a large-scale problem together, even though said problem has absolutely nothing to do with you. When the day is saved and these passing acquaintances go away, you’ll sigh with relief and look forward to returning to your normal everyday life, until the next time you’re forced to see them again.

* The Powers That Be may decide your marriage is not only over, but never should’ve happened in the first place. Even if the two of you had been succeeding at life together like a high-functioning force of nature, you may be informed that you’re wrong because marriage is stupid and unrelatable. Eliminating this baggage may require methods as drastic as a poorly contrived deal with the Devil, which is much more entertaining and morally justifiable in their eyes than scenes of competent wedded bliss.

* If the New You severely underperforms and fails to meet numerous unspoken expectations, the New You may be terminated at any time without notice and replaced with the Old You.

If you’re contemplating wiping your entire slate clean and insisting that a brand new Year One is now in effect, with no regard for the good parts and people around you that may suffer as a result, remember this bit of advice above all else: just because a committee of greedy businessmen tells you to reboot your entire life doesn’t mean you should.