New Year’s Resolutions

Happy New Year!

I hope your New Year has started out better than mine…

Firstly, my first breakfast of the year (umm…brunch…lunch…okay, I admit I ate at 3pm) was supposed to be an order of “Pecan waffles with banana”. But I was presented with bacon waffles with banana…

(phonologically, the waitress should only hear the inverse with my accent, but maybe she craved bacon herself?)

Secondly, I went to Borders to buy a 2009 calendar. I wanted something picturesque and local, perhaps some purdy redwood shots or craggy California coastline.

Disappointingly, all that was left was Nuns Having Fun. But we’re not talking taboo naughty nuns and their crucifixes, we’re talking Mother Superior.

These virginal sisters are nuns of fun and frivolity. Nuns around the campfire,  nuns on skates, nuns playing soccer, a nun on a tractor; and all in their most strict liturgical vestments…

It’s “Habit-Forming”, they pun.

Like Hell it is…

But while on the topic of bad habits…

Sylvia Browne emailed me a “2009 New Year’s Resolution”.  Just for me! (and every other Leo.) Sylvia suggested that I, “Celebrate other people’s uniqueness”. Thanks Sylvia. I can think of a few New Year’s Resolutions for you too…

But most New Year’s Resolutions are about addictions. You probably resolve to lose weight, to quit gambling and go cold turkey on that heroin habit.  And I think it’s great that you want to improve your own natural selection in a sense; to go back to University, or stop being an utter shithead. But why is this a “New Year’s Resolution”?

Why did you select New Year’s Day to quit smoking? Why do you start your diet on Monday morning?

I think it’s part procrastination…we’re lazy, we’re unmotivated, and pass me that goddamned pecan waffle, I’ll start the diet after this one… last…indulgence…

And I think it’s part magical thinking…

We seem to import a mysticism onto the chosen day. New Year’s Day, Monday, Tomorrow is a clean slate, a fresh start, an untainted new day, a new horizon, a new beginning.   There’s ritual, routine and tradition to it; but not rationale.

Why always tomorrow? Why not right fucking now, irrespective of the date? Because you want to do it, or you have to do it? Grandmotherly wisdom has already packaged this into nice little  idioms like, “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” If we don’t make change, change happens anyway…

It’s an old chestnut that our New Year’s Resolutions won’t be resolved. Potheads will continue smoking, the chubby will not only not lose weight but put on additional pounds, and the pisspots will continue to be found at the local dive bar.  But it needn’t be that way.

You don’t need to wait until tomorrow, you don’t need to attend classes or courses, you don’t need to buy a book, you don’t need to fire walk. Isn’t it exciting that you can do something right now, you fat, ugly, stupid, cigarette-reeking, alcoholic, pothead, gambling shithead?

I’m saving you the fate of 1000 self-help books.

Trust me, I’m a doctor.

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