Resolutions: Fun or Failure

Hello, my faithful, if not willingly faithful then my begrudgingly faithful followers. Unknowingly, I took a sabbatical from my blog. Some of you are less than thrilled that I am back with a bang. I’m sure you are waiting with baited breath to see what will spill from my soul whereas others are so excited to hear me wax philosophical about something mundane and prosaic but when it comes from my mouth it is neither of those things.

Moving on, shall we? We are at the beginning of a New Year and of course what do all of us do at the beginning of a new year – no, not chew our arm off, we make New Year’s Resolutions aka Setting Ourselves Up for Failure. Year after year we do this, why? It’s like that bad boyfriend we can’t seem to shake or that last 5 or 10 pounds that we can’t lose. Let us look together at the top resolutions people make every single year and figure out why people would want to kick themselves in the chutzpah year after year.

1. Lose weight – I’ve struggled with my weight for years and let me clue you in on something. Once your skinny, your struggles don’t go away. You’ll find your still in therapy for one reason or another. Does it feel good to shop at different stores or to fit into your old jeans? Hell yes, but most of the time you’re not addressing the real issue. Besides, ugly is ugly no matter how skinny you are.

2. Exercise more – This works for the first several weeks in January. Gym memberships are up 36% during the month of January alone and are empty by Valentines Day. Explain the logic to me on this one. Now if you use your membership-more power to you but if you don’t then…

3. Spend more time with family – Why on earth would you do this to yourself? They make you miserable and make you fail at #4.

4. Lessen Intake of Alcohol/Chocolate – Why, god why would you set yourself up for this type of failure? Only a fool would do this especially if you have family or a boss that drives you crazy.

The way I look at it, you are already perfect the way you are. Making a resolution, a statement of change implies that something is wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with you. It’s the people around you or the negative voice inside your head that needs to be tuned out. I’m all for tweaking and improving yourself but to go about it the wrong way is what I’m against. Maybe I’m delusional or I’ve been in therapy long enough to not set myself up for failure but I’m setting logical, realistic and simple resolutions. They are as follows:

1. Read books to make me smarter. I intend to focus on the Tudor Dynasty and Supreme Court Justices at first then segue into Domestic and Foreign Economic Policy.
2. Increase my accessories.
3. Step outside my comfort zone with cute outfits.
4. Figure out how to keep Liam’s toys organized.

This may seem like a very simple list to you but there’s no reason at this juncture to be profound.