I discovered recently that when it comes to greeting the New Year there are two kinds of people. They form two camps of folks– those who only look back, and those who only look forward.

I’m in the look back camp. I just can’t put the old year to bed without a thorough review. I need time for a deep reassessment, a revisit of key experiences during the past 12 months. Some of my friends unkindly call this rehashing. Some have even gone so far as to suggest my new mantra should be the song ‘Let It Go’ from the movie Frozen. No matter. I know what works for me.

The look forward people who seem not to have the slightest emotional tug to review intrigue me. When they are done, they are done. They blithely leave the old year behind with little more than a fare thee well. For them the bright light of New Year’s possibility far outweighs the nostalgia about what has been.

But it’s more than nostalgia for me. Looking back allows me to hold on to some precious moments before they fade into the sepia tone of memory. Poet Elizabeth Alexander captures just how I feel in her soon to be published memoir, “The Light of the World.” Alexander writes about “looking back from forward” as she grieves her young husband’s sudden death, saying, “something is fading, not the memory of him, but the press of memory.”  It was hard enough to lose my beloved Aunt and cousin this year. I’m not yet ready to lose that press of memory, the poignant intensity that keeps them present in my consciousness.

When you focus on looking back you are reminded of how quickly time whizzes by. You can’t really go forward unless you slow down to reflect on where you have been and how long it took you to get there.   Only then are you ready to turn the page, to exit the old year.

Turns out my method of transitioning to the New Year is a good way to deal with endings of all kinds. Scholar Sara Lawrence Lightfoot wrote about the importance of exiting with intention. The Harvard sociologist asks, “How might we find ways to reframe our exits, giving them the attention and the significance they are due?” Endings liberate us Lightfoot says. "In seeing our lives through the lens of the exit,” she writes, … “we learn to celebrate completion.”

I’ve got a couple of days left to close the chapter on 2014. A couple of days to join the folks who’ve already mentally crossed over the threshold into the New Year. I’ll welcome 2015 by celebrating an end that leads to a beginning-- facing forward.

Callie Crossley is the host of Under the Radar with Callie Crossley.