Okay, I admit in the past I have trashed the whole resolution idea, being the dissolutioned old cynic that I am. But if you had to listen to as many people as I have as they harp on about the mental line they have drawn in the sand between them and their demons, you'd be cynical too.
The biscuit addict signing up to Weight Watchers (again), the forty a day smoker stocking up on patches (that they're never going to use), the scatterbrain buying her page-a-day diary.
I am not a kill joy by nature but I have grown weary of nodding my head and making those affirming noises that people need to hear, while knowing categorically that in a matter of weeks we will be here again, sat at this same table, having that other conversation about what went wrong.
My general (and relatively uneducated) feeling is that people are full of noise but that annoying clatter rarely amounts to positive and contructive action. I have lost count of the people I know whose New Year's resolutions have gone the way of the do-do by the first week of Febuary while the people who have succeeded in their goal, well I could count them on my nose. "Count them, Jim. One."
I personally threw in the towel on the resolution thing years ago, not through fear of inevitable failure, but because January is a stupid time to make these promises to yourself. It's freezing outside, blowing a gale, the tele is the best it's been all year (not saying much, granted) We've just spent the last two weeks stuffing our faces with rich food, chocolate and booze turning the twenty pounds we were planning on shedding this year more like thirty and the gym is full of treadmill hogging wankers.
We are doomed before we even begin.
I took to publishing an accomplishment list, stating things I had achieved in the previous year but, although we have a new baby and I'm now a fully qualified dispenser, 2011 has been otherwise uneventful. So it would be easy to fall back on old habits, listing resolutions for next year that I will struggle to keep and then feel like a failure when I fall short of my own exacting standards or I could list the things I DON'T want for next year and hope that this list written by my own hand (well, two finger peck) will stand as a reminder to my weaker self.
1) I don't want a wardrobe where 80% of the clothes don't fit me.
2) I don't want to spend every day doing what other people want.
3) I don't want to miss out.
4) I don't want to sit on my half finished novel for another year.
5) I don't want to teach my kids bad habits.
6) I don't want to lose any more friends to apathy.
7) I don't want to worry about money all the time.
8) I don't want to apologise for being myself anymore.
9) I don't want to be too tired to enjoy my kids.
10) I don't want to care what people think.
I hope 2012 brings you all a little more of what you want, a little less of what you don't but, above all else, good health and happiness to you and yours.
