New Year's Resolutions

It’s been a long while since I found the time, energy or inspiration to write on this website, and the flag is still detached from the White House.

I wish I could say I’d been doing something with high levels of excitement to take me away from writing here, but that would simply be inaccurate: I’ve been working for university with varying rates of success, and working for money with similar; I’ve been trying to lead a somewhat productive life, taking advantage of every suitable scheme thrown at me by Exeter, dancing at home, socialising in both and travelling between them, and somewhere in the midst of all this I lost the ideas and, frankly, all waking hours in which I would write.

However, amongst all this, one thing which jumped out at me as something upon which I could expand and also appropriate to the season was New Year’s resolutions. 

Now I think they’re a good idea but they can be somewhat restrictive. After all, how many do people ever keep? Which ones are successfully kept? And why are such determinations reserved for the beginning of the year?

My point is that the things I have actually resolved ever to do and succeeded in have rarely developed out of a New Year’s resolution. I made the common goal to lose weight that so many people make for a good two or three years running when I was in my mid teens, and I did do so… in October of the third or fourth year, at the persuasion of my mother. Just this year I resolved to make the best of a bad situation when I did not enjoy university. It took me until October to really try and to have any actual success. Maybe someone can prove me wrong, but it seems like New Year’s resolutions are easily made, and easily forgotten.

I know of somebody who, and she perhaps won’t thank me for sharing this, made a “New Year’s” resolution about a week ago but chose to act on it now, and so far it remains intact. It isn’t really a New Year’s resolution made in mid-December, maybe, but I would argue that resolutions should not be contained to the New Year. If you have a sudden absolute urge to make an improvement in your life, why put it off until the New Year when today is as good a day as any? If nothing else, you could simply change your mind by the time 1^st January rolls around.

Moreover, so many unattainable and unrealistic goals are bandied about during Januaries that it makes me shake my head. No wonder no one sticks to them if they’re so hard to achieve! It is indeed a new year, but it is not the year you become perfect. Pick something with a reasonable plan of action attached to it and at least give yourself a chance of doing it.

So you may get the impression that I plan on setting no New Year’s Resolutions this year, but you’d be wrong. Mine is a continuation of the resolve I found in September: keep busy, keep happy. (Oh and plan of action: do what I want to do, and not what everyone else wants me to do. It’s good advice that I should have learnt sooner.)