New Year's Resolutions

You know what they say: new year, new blog post in a desperate attempt to resurrect the last shards of literary prowess that we once prided ourselves on (‘they’, ‘we’ and ‘ourselves’ more or less just meaning ‘I’ and ‘myself’, but let’s not get exclusive).

Having grown into a woman and embarked on a career path (albeit one which steered me straight past the financial comfort and mundane-yet-mature daily routine usually associated with adulthood, and straight towards East London, a bright red overdraft, Justin Bieber and that shit film Twilight) there’s little time for whimsy, so –coupled with the fact that my ankle healed long ago – I find there to be good enough excuses to keep these posts short and sweet*.

So 2012: it’s a new year. Great, that is true enough. I just wish we would leave it at that; it’s a good solid fact. Unfortunately, people tend to follow it up with: ‘New You’, ‘Fresh Start’ etc etc, and that’s when the clock striking midnight becomes a whole new, ludicrous thing. Don’t get me wrong, that part when we all shake each other’s arms up and down and sing the words we don’t know to the tune of Auld Lang Syne is wonderful; I’m not convinced there’s actually anything better...

...But IF YOU WERE A BIT OF A PSYCHO/DICKHEAD/GODDAMN FOOL AT 11:59PM ON 31^ST DECEMBER 2011, CHANCES ARE YOU’LL STILL BE A BIT OF A PSYCHO/DICKHEAD/GODDAMN FOOL COME 00:01 ON 1^ST JANUARY. Fine, you could make yourself a healthier one, one who drinks their 8 litres-a-day (is that really it?! Seems excessive, dangerous even), frequents the gymnasium and finds themselves a partner, but – I’m just putting it out there – IF YOU QUITE FANCIED DOING THESE THINGS ANYWAY, WHY ON EARTH WAIT til the deepest, darkest winter when there are no flowers, no squirrels, nothing to frolic aptly and happily in the background while you bound around with a newfound sprightliness?

Needless to say, I’m not a massive fan of resolutions. Resolving to do things can only end one of two ways: success or failure; whereas there’s a fluidity to ‘loosely planning’ that leaves room for the unknowns. And hey, who (un)knows, the unknowns might even present us with some better options than those we scribbled down in an intoxicated mess after unhooking our fingers from the sleeves of one another’s woollen garments (post-Auld Lang Syne, in case you were struggling with that one).

People make new year’s resolutions every year, they worry about them, they don’t keep them, then they worry about having not kept them. Basically, they fail, then they do it all again. And thus today just becomes the tomorrow that we worried about yesterday.

A wise person (the Dalai Lama: wise, and also bizarrely a guest judge on a recent episode of Master Chef Australia**) once said: “If you have fear, pain or suffering, and there is something you can do about it, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry.” True dat.

So if you’re gunning for a ‘fresh start’, why not just loosely plan always to be fresh? (soap and deodorant, they help) If it’s a ‘new you’ you want to uncover, how about just being you? (and if you’re a bit of a psycho/dickhead/goddamn fool, that’s really tough luck). Either way, just because it’s the beginning of the year, I see no point in forcing an inordinate amount of pressure on things that should be worked on over time. There’s no point in worrying about life, it’s not like we’ll survive it.

*Which, according to a certain rapper I recently spoke with, aptly  describes myself... although – at the risk of being shot – I’d argue that sitting lofty at 5’8’’ I’m above average height for a girl, and having not-so-long-ago been called a ‘b*tch’ (gasp) by one of the tamest people I’ve ever met, I’m probably not all that sweet either.

**Apparently not just shrimps and barbies.