I think resolutions are mostly a good thing. Identifying something you don’t like about yourself and making a decision to change it is beautiful and rare and not everyone can do it.
I think New Year’s resolutions are stupid. I get the psychology I guess: It’s a new year, a new beginning, blah blah blah. Making a change for any reason other than wanting to make it usually results in failure to actually make that change. The same holds true for most resolutions made out of regret (I point to anyone who ever decided to stop drinking while they were hung over, after drinking like a teenager at a New Year’s Eve party the night before. Most of them wind up drinking again by month’s end.).
That said, I made my first ever New Year’s resolutions this year (well, technically, last year I guess, since it was on the 31st). The first one was easy. A couple days after Christmas, I did a report in Quicken to find out what I’d been spending my money on these last couple years. The largest slice of the pie chart (hah!) was for dining out. “Dining out” sounds nice but as that phrase applies to myself, most of the time it just means some shitty McShit Burger, ordered because I was too lazy to make my own breakfast or too busy to eat a proper lunch. So my first resolution was to never again eat fast food. “Fast food”, in this case, being any restaurant with either a drive-thru or a national advertising campaign. And, over a month into it, I’ve saved a bunch of money. Stoked.
The other resolution is much more difficult in that it basically calls for a change of personality on my part. When I first made it, I basically said that I didn’t want to give a voice to any negative shit in my head. I’m tired of negativity (my own and everyone else’s) and I don’t want to contribute to it any more. As you can imagine, this resolution was an impossible request to make of myself, and I’d already failed multiple times by the 2nd. I quickly realized that not giving a voice to negative thoughts was both impossible (for me) and stupid. Sometimes, a complaint here or there is a necessary thing.
I’m not exactly sure what I want to accomplish but basically, I’m trying to just shut the fuck up if I don’t have anything nice to say. Last year I unintentionally disrespected the lifelong career of the father of one of my friends. He’s retired from a profession I happen to dislike quite a bit but he sure as fuck doesn’t need to know that. Hell, no one does, it’s just a personal opinion I have. Writing this, I’m thinking maybe I should amend the resolution into two parts: Shutting the fuck up when I don’t have anything nice to say, and not being so arrogant that I think every one of my opinions is important enough to be shared with the world.
Which, come to think of it, just boils down to not being as much of a fucking blowhard. Hmm:
Main Entry: blow·hard
Function: noun
Date: 1848
1 : BRAGGART
2 : WINDBAG
Okie doke:
Main Entry: brag·gart
Function: noun
Date: circa 1577
: a loud arrogant boasterMain Entry: wind·bag
Function: noun
Date: 1827
: an exhaustively talkative person
Ouch. Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. So my second resolution is to not be such a fucking blowhard. It’ll be interesting to see how many times I fuck that one up.
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So why make these resolutions on New Year’s? Fucked if I know.