New Year's Resolutions- what's that all about, and why bother?

So we're over a week into January. The brainless and the spineless have had enough time to set themselves unacheivable goals and then break most of their several A4 pages worth.

A-Ring-A-Ding-Ding- Happy New Year!

Sorry, too grumpy a point with which to start the glorified beginning of the New Year? Well, be that as it may, I still really don't understand why we congratulate each other and ourselves. Why celebrate the date at all?

Christmas, to me, is no longer about a baby being born on a dubiously researched date (anywhere from September to February, dontcha know) but about showing the people still on this mortal coil who I happen to not entirely dislike how much I don't entirely dislike them. New Year, surely, should be the same thing. Showing people you don't entirely wish to murder for being irritating how much you don't entirely wish to murder them (that is, showing your friends who they are) should be what we affix an abitrary date to. Get rid of this "happy new" bollocks. On average, you'll have at least 80 of these chunks of moments. That's over twice as many little white calcium blades you've got in your mouth. Just put that in your perspective pipe and have a puff.



The thing I really don't get about the New Year idea, the whole resolutions thing, is why in the modern world we keep this bloody tradition going. Why do we need an arbitrary date on which to start repairing our stupid little lives? I get that in the past the Pagan and Heathen man and woman would celebrate the New Year as some sort of turning point (actually closer to Christmas as a non-Christian feast, but hey-ho), as a point where they had survived the cold grip of icey gods and had earned another year. But, assuming that most Pagan and Heathen men and women lived above three, surely they'd notice that it happened every year? And, hoping that some of them lived past eight, they'd surely have had a couple of years of life with which to experiment being neutral and even bad towards the gods, and still stayed alive? So why bother sorting out what we're going to do for the next three hundred and sixty five days of the year?

Pretty sure he was over three years old. Just saying.

For that matter, why do we celebrate New Year's at all? Why wait for a certain or specific date to congratulate ourselves on surviving reasonably unscathed for yet another arbitrary period of time, as that is what a year is (at the end of the day, as it were)? This isn't me being miserable. Far from it, even though yes, that might be what you've come to expect from this blog, and yes, on the surface this post ticks all the boxes. Honestly, though, I'm more perplexed than anything. You want to change something about your life, well done. Do you need to set a specific date in the future from which you can start to make those adjustments you've thought of? What about waiting until tomorrow, and then living each day as it comes? Seriously, tomorrow is the beginning of your dying days, and you should just do stuff. Simple. You don't need to wait until twelve on the evening of the masses' choosing.

Come to think of it, don't wait until tomorrow. Do it now. Just pack up all the shit you've been carrying that weighs you down, slows you down and holds you back. Put all that... over there, somewhere. And then, think hard. What do you want to do?



The world is summed up so easily in The Pursuit Of Happyness. Will Smith turns to kiddie Smith and says this- "You got a dream... You gotta protect it. People can't do somethin' themselves, they wanna tell you you can't do it. If you want somethin', go get it. Period." I'd like to think people have enough sense to live by that. The line wasn't "Go get it. After a certain date where everyone gets drunk, or miserable, or both. Period." So don't live like that.

But hey. Why listen to me?

I'm sure all the people, and I mean all of them, who started their resolutions to lose weight/ gain confidence/ prioritise/ visit the States/ travel outside Wymondley have made excellent starts and haven't wavered at all over the last eight days. I am so certain of it I'd bet my unicorn.

You know why?

People, faced with what can only be described as THE WORLD

Because people are scared of everything. That's the reason we put things off until THAT DATE. That date being the one where EVERYONE, or at least what looks like EVERYONE, or at least what looks like EVERYONE THAT MATTERS, which is to say EVERYONE WE WANT TO BE LIKE, makes a commitment. Statistically, there'll never be a year where 100% of people who make resolutions keep them. So you're failsafed. You can get rid of yours after a while, knowing you'd never have stuck at it anyway, because a lot of people dropped the ball before you.

DON'T DO THAT.

Write down what you want from life, tonight.

In the morning, look at it.

Then do something about it. If you want something, go get it. Period.