Self-Improvement
An Easy Way to Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions
Super easy. So easy. Easy breezy.
Do make New Year’s resolutions each December 31 only to completely give up by January 3? Are you looking for an easy way to keep those darn resolutions? Look no further, because I have the answer. Ready?
Don’t make New Year’s resolutions. See? So easy!
If you want to do something different next year, just try and do it. Exercise a bit more, stop eating so much sugar, hug people, look in the mirror and say aloud three things you like about yourself. You honestly don’t need a mood board or a manifestation journal (honestly, what is that?), and you certainly don’t need to make New Year’s resolutions.
Now if you want to make New Year’s resolutions because you’ve made them in the past and you’re one of those people who can make a plan and stick to it like Gorilla Glue, you go for it, you magnificent bastard. Put Post-It-Notes all over the house with your 2023 goals and aspirations written in permanent marker upon the glorious hot pink/neon green paper. Heck, write those goals and aspirations on yourself in a permanent marker. Get them tattooed on your arms.
I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. My husband and I talk about our five-year plan every wedding anniversary. This year was anniversary number eighteen, and I looked at my hubby and asked “So, what’s our five-year plan?” to which he responded “I guess we just stay here longer” and we stared at each other with sadness in our slightly twitching eyes.
Granted, I am still on the weight loss getting healthier track, but I do fail from time to time. Last night, for example, I had two squares of Ghiradelli chocolate around 11. That’s not in any way what I’m supposed to do: I’m supposed to stop eating at 6:30 PM and start eating the next day at 10:30 AM. In between, I usually drink a lot of water and sigh dramatically. Sometimes I weep silently in the bathroom.
New Year’s resolutions are for self-disciplined people, people who can walk by a patisserie window and not even flinch. People who go to the movies and never get popcorn. People who jog outside in Minnesota when the high temperature is 5.
I am not those people. Thanks to Celiac disease, I get pretty emotional when I walk by a patisserie window. Thanks to anti-vax sociopaths, I will never go to the movies again. And my knees are too bad to jog. If I was being chased by a serial killer and my choices were run or die, I would ask said serial killer to tell my family I love them before he eviscerated me, chopped off my head, and ate it with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
This entire essay is a tangent, isn’t it?
Anyway, you don’t have to make New Year’s resolutions. You can simply decide to do better, be better, eat better, and do nice things for others and for yourself. Skip Starbucks for a month and donate the money you save to a local homeless shelter. Have a spa night. Go for walks in the woods. Pet more dogs.
Just be a better person. Treat people with love and respect, except for Nazis because **** those assholes. What?
Don’t stress about New Year’s resolutions. Also don’t drink and drive on New Year’s Eve. Or do what we’re doing, which is having dinner at my dad’s and then going home before 8 PM. Wait. All 900+ of my wonderful followers cannot come to my dad’s house for pot roast. What I meant was celebrate safely at home, and maybe eat pot roast.
Dammit, there’s another tangent. Honestly, I’m so embarrassed.
Have a safe and happy New Year’s Eve. Don’t make New Year’s resolutions if you don’t want to. I’ll see you all in 2023.
