It’s been a while since I last posted but believe me when I say that I have a pre-planned list of topics jotted down that I intend to get around to over the coming weeks. Before I continue however, I want to say that I hope you all had a great Christmas. Unfortunately though, I’m here to lower the tone and drop a huge steaming turd on the head of the next annual ritual: New Year’s Resolutions.
They are complete bullshit for the simple reason that 95% of adopters (a figure I admittedly pulled from thin air rather than obtaining through painstaking research) have already set themselves up to fail at the same time they forged their resolutions. The simple reason for this is that they can’t be serious enough about changing if they can’t commit to making that change right there and then as opposed to waiting for January 1st to land.
It’s the same mindset as vowing to lay off alcohol after “just one more drink”, resolving to eat healthier (but only after one last, final blowout McDonalds) or promising to kick a porn addiction…but not until you’ve said farewell by watching one last compilation of hardcore deepthroat. Thing is, this “one for the road” mentality doesn’t speak of determination or true resolve. It is the sufferer still enslaved to their vice(s) and bound by invisible shackles to whatever the poison in question is. It is the the act of seeking a quick high by promising to change tomorrow and feeling good about yourself in the process while also getting one ‘last’ hit of the good bad stuff. For these people, it is always tomorrow…or the day after, or next week even. As long as it isn’t now. This is a lifestyle of never getting anything important or big done and constantly running/hiding from personal problems or demons. ‘Saving’ a problem to be the target of a New Year’s Resolution is simply an excuse; a way to avoid confronting it until the last possible moment. If you can’t face up to it now then where is the magical strength of the New Year gods going to suddenly come from on January 1st?
It is important to remind ourselves that the concepts of time, dates and calendars are human creations designed by us as a species to complement Order and act as a form of measurement. This is all quite necessary BUT the flow of time is constant and so in reality there is absolutely no change between December 31st and January 1st other than some numbers that we attach to these days in order to understand where the fuck we currently are relative to the past and future. Strip all of this away and the daftness of waiting until January 1st 2019 to make a (potentially crucial) change in our lives is painfully stark. It is simply another day and to view it as special for any reason is pointless in reality. The act of making a New Year’s Resolution is purely symbolic and the problem with symbolism is that it doesn’t count for fuck all on an individual, personal level unless there is a genuinely impactful and powerful life-changing event behind it.
So no, I won’t be making any resolutions this year. Don’t get me wrong though: despite what I’ve just bashed out on the keyboard in this post in true preacher style, I have a HEAP of faults, flaws and life elements that I need to fix or improve. I eat too much crap, waste too much time on the internet, don’t put enough effort into my love life, watch too much porn, work an unstimulating job with non-ideal pay…the list could continue on into a thick notebook to be honest and it is the same for all of us. The point is that these are all things that I can constantly work on now and take personal responsibility for. Thinking that I will find sudden success by re-wording my problems into resolutions for 2019 is simply foolish.
New Year’s Resolutions also seem to take the form of cold turkey self-imposed bans on doing specific things and this too is a road to failure. After all, you crave what you aren’t allowed that much more and with nobody but yourself to be accountable to, a slip-up is inevitable. Problems have to be tackled one at a time and with an analytical approach that targets the roots, just like any good weed killer chemical.
I plan to discuss some of my own problems and how I am working on tackling them in upcoming posts. Maybe it will be useful for somebody else to read and I will no doubt learn much myself purely by putting my thoughts into words. One thing I AM clear on though is that New Year’s Resolutions are not the way to go about it.
Unfiltered Opinion 
One thought on “New Year’s Resolutions are Bullshit”