Thursday 9 January 2014

2014, eh?! Kuh! Who'd-a thought...

New Year, New You!  Resolutions!  Bigger (or smaller)!  Better!  Shinier!  Happier!  Healthier!  Wealthier!  BETTTTTTERRRRR!!!

Ah, bollocks, to it.

I'm a big believer in drawing a line under behaviour which you want to change, and I can see that the closing of a year is a good time to do so, but it's also entirely arbitrary.  Most of us are skint and knackered from Christmas, and from spending too many of our waking hours in the dark, instead of hibernating like pigs.  I mean, cows.  I mean BEARS!  Sheesh!

We've barely drawn breath (and should still, if we listened to our bodies, be spending about 16 hours a day in our caves) and we start telling ourselves we have to stop eating or drinking this or that, start cleaning or tidying the other (not THE other - hopefully that's ... okay, I'm walking away from this bracket before it gets filthy), kick highly addictive bad habits, make new healthy habits - you get the idea.

If you have a New Year's Resolution, I salute you.  I applaud you.  And I wish you well in keeping it. Genuinely - that's not some kind of sarky "oh yeah, like, good luck, loser!" kind of wish.  I really do wish you well.

If, however, you fall at the third or fourth hurdle (look, even I am trusting you to get beyond the first couple, okay?), don't beat yourself up.  Don't give up doing what you started doing.  Or start doing what you gave up doing.  Just acknowledge that it's a hard time of year to make changes.

Energy levels are depleted.  Stores of Vitamin D are low (on which subject, I beg of you that if we ever get any sunshine this year, you allow yourselves and your loved ones at least half an hour a day of sun on your skin with no sunscreen.  Please.  Just for me.  Call it a resolution - one which is easy to keep).  Those of us who enjoy the odd drinkie to get us through the evening are probably a little more reliant on it than usual, having got our bodies WELL used to it over the festive season.  We've stretched our stomachs so they think they need more food.  We've eaten more sweet things than we usually would, and now our insatiable bods are craving sugar.  We've lounged around watching telly and allowing our brains to turn to mush when we'd normally be getting up and getting dressed and getting the kids to school and getting to work and tidying the house and doing the admin and going to exercise classes and being a taxi service and eating a healthy amount of healthy food and ALL THE OTHER MILLIONS of day to day tasks.

My resolution - such as it is, and it's not a real one, because I don't make them - is to get up and get dressed and get the kids to school and do some work and tidy the house and do the admin and go to exercise classes and be a taxi service and eat a healthy amount of healthy food throughout January as effectively as I did in December.  Which is not always very.  But it's MORE effective than it has been for the last three weeks.  Once I've got back into the swing of things, which won't take long, I'll rejoice in making a lot of other small changes.  But meanwhile, I'm not going to doom myself to failure by making a load of unrealistic resolutions which just end up making me feel bad about myself.

So there.

I will also find time to make a list of things which I really, genuinely would like to improve about myself, my environment and my behaviour.  Believe me, it will be a long list.  I will then figure out how to make this happen.  And then, and only then, I will figure out when the time is right my frame of mind is good enough to tackle these things.

Meanwhile, eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow - who the fuck knows?

Happy New Year, my friends.