New Year's Resolutions

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

It always seems like we draw the short straw at this time of the year. After all the partying and celebrating and eating, we are suddenly expected to snap back into dismal January routines with nothing to look forward to, feeling fat and having overdone it on the mince pies. Just to improve what is, let's be honest, a pretty pants month, some  bright spark decided to invent New Year's resolutions. So we can become healthier, friendlier, more caring and generally better people in the following year, of course.

However, in my experience, this often has the opposite effect. When I was younger, I would try desperately  to achieve my resolution of not biting my nails...only to forget and break it in about two hours. Then, I would beat myself up about not being able to stick to it, bite my nails some more, give up and resolve to try harder next year.

So, I stopped making New Year's resolutions for a while. It seemed silly to make a special effort at the beginning of the year when realistically, I knew it would never last past January 10th.

This year though, I decided to try again. It's my last year at home, I should make try even harder to be a nicer person and do all those things I've always wanted to do while I still have the cosy comfort of my parents to fall back on, I thought.

As you all know, I like lists! So I decided to make a list of ideas for resolutions in my beautiful Emma Bridgewater spotty notebook, because having them all written down nicely would of course make keeping them instantly easy.

Sadly, the first attempt quickly turned into a list of all my failings. I managed to come up with thirty two, yes thirty two things that I wanted to change in approximately four minutes. And this is without even touching the surface of those psychological gremlins that we all have deep down. The more I wrote, the more I disliked myself for not having done any of these things before, so the more things I thought of, the more I wrote, and so on... I would not recommend this exercise for a self-esteem boost!

So you can see the extent of my madness, here is my initial list. Click on it if you need to see it bigger, my scanner has created a monster formatting nightmare.

 Looking back on it, what was I thinking? Number eight, stop watching romcoms?! Never going to happen! Ditto controlling my frizzy hair-it has a mind of its own and I will just have to accept this fact. Speaking French like a French person is also impossible, considering I am about as blandly British as a shepherd's pie. Going on a protest march is unlikely to happen now I've seen the footage I missed at the time of police on horses charging at the students protesters against the education cuts. I am waaay too much of a scaredy cat for that! Oops, guess there goes 'break out of my comfort zone' too, sigh.

I did, thankfully, realise how stupid list number one was, and did another:

Number one: be more realistic- that's more like it.  I do need to achieve number two before going to university, otherwise I will arrive at university looking what I like to call 'bohemian' and 'non-conformist', but what others call 'tramp' due to lack of funds. Stopping procrastinating is also essential so that I can actually get to a university! But in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter if I watch fewer romcoms, does it? And eleven resolutions is rather too many!

I'm not really sure how to conclude this post, and I'm aware it seems quite negative! The post-Christmas slump obviously unleashed my inner pessimist, who is usually kept in check by sprinkles of optimism and not thinking about it-ness.
But I guess my point is: why bother making unrealistic resolutions anyway? It would be much better if we all just tried to do little things throughout the year. Here's to February Resolutions, to Easter Resolutions and to Summer Resolutions! Good luck! I know I'll need it.