by Snap Bickerman
The arbitrary splitting of the 364 days where the time is not yet ripe for folks to resolve to, say, stop peeing out the window rather than having to walk down the hallway to the communal bathroom in your dorm, and the 1 day of the new year when you decide to finally put your more civilized intentions into practice. Whether it be a pornography, review writing, addiction or a tendency to spend your time moralising to your friends who may or may not have this addiction, everybody has tendencies to get rid of. What makes that beginning of a new year a special time for making changes?
For that matter, the quintessential addition of habits for New Year’s tends to be going to the gym more, or eating healthier, which not only could be started at any time but have good reasons not to be started at New Years. The gym is going to be most crowded at the new year with all the other tools who resolved to do the same thing, and all the broccoli in the supermarkets will be bought out by other would-be healthy eaters or raised to exorbitant prices in anticipation.
Worse of all the 1 % of people who manage to actually keep their resolutions will get to be superior about it for all 11.5 months to that the rest of us that have already abandoned our resolutions. These ‘resolutions’ are a social injustice thinly disguised as a shoddy self-improvement program.
This new year I am resolving to call it quits. No more resolutions. No more changes of habit. No more faffing about and dropping my resolutions halfway through January.
Now I say, with all the resolution I can muster, my resolutions shall be to resolve to have no new resolutions, as resolutely as I possibly can be resolved. I shall continue all my poor habits and take up nothing else on top of that, whatsoever. Then when next year comes around I can renew my resolution of being non-resolute, and I will be just as perpetually stuck in the same rut as everyone else who actually tried to improve their lives and abandoned their resolutions during the year.
But unlike them, I will have won. Yes, me, someone who writes pornographic reviews, shall be your moral superior, and will get lord it over you all 11.5 months of the year, every year from now on. Does that sound stupid? Of course, it does. Join me, #OptOut #99% #ShitAtResolutions
