Resolutions

I've never really understood the purpose of making New Year's Resolutions. You're just coming off a huge string of holidays, you've been lazy for weeks, and you've got presumably a whole batch of new things from Christmas. What the hell makes you think you're going to just jump into a new life aspect? The most common resolution is to go to the gym. Do you really expect to get up and start going to the gym right away? Especially January 1st. You've just spent the night partying. Getting up in the morning is not going to go well, and you think you're going to get up and do work you've probably never successfully done before? It's not going to work.

It's early to be talking about this. So why am I? Because trying to move it back a week isn't any better. It's Christmas today. It's a day to be lazy. It is so incredibly hard to make myself do anything but play games that I got as presents. And that's what I've been doing all day. And yet, here I am, writing another bit of writing.

I started this a week prior to Christmas. I knew this was coming. But that's why I started it early. I wanted to start building the habit before the hard part came. It's easier to keep pushing than to start. Especially through the hard times. At some level, we all know this, because we've all been through it. In school, in work, with our family. We've all had times where we wanted to just give up, but we did it anyway.

But imagine if that was the starting point. If finals came before the classes, if evaluations came before the work, and if the fights came before the love. Why would you ever get past day one? Why would you ever want to? We may not want to acknowledge it, but the new year is probably the day when we are weakest, at least as far as a regular calendar is concerned. We are happy, undoubtedly, but we are tired, fat, and weak. That's just how it goes.

So why is this when we try to make a life changing difference? I grant, we feel weak, we want to change that. But we know it's going to happen. It's an established tradition. It's about changing. So let's change it.

Let's make our resolutions on December 1st, instead of January. Then we have time. We've recovered from Thanksgiving enough that we can start doing something impactful. We still have to deal with our everyday lives, but that's the point. You can't make a change in yourself on an abnormal day. If you do, when you get back to the normal, you don't know how to make the two fit together. So you do it when nothing is letting you do it.

The first day still sucks. It always will. But it won't suck as much. And the second day you can actually make it to. The third day, you might have to take a break, but on the fourth day you get right back to it. Make no excuses, except no excuses. A week goes by before you know it, and you keep going. Then when the holidays arrive, you have momentum. It carries you through Christmas, as much as it sucks, and it keeps you going til New Years. Then you make it to January 1st, and what do you do? You don't change anything. That's the important bit. It is absolutely vital that you don't change anything, because you have already made your change, and you need to stick to it. It must be normal, or at least getting there. Because January 1st is the hard part.

I am trying very hard to keep this up. I have to make it to the New Year before I even start counting. That's what I decided. But I'm trying very hard before I even get there because I want to give myself as much of a chance to do it as I can. That's why I have such a hard time understanding the tradition. New Years, to me, isn't a time to start over. It's a time to start counting. Counting the things we've already started, and counting how long we can keep them up.