Goodbye, New Year’s Resolution
It’s January 2nd, which means all those good intentions sharing space in my head with a brutal hangover can now return to their 364-day hibernation.
I remember my first resolution — I was a teenager and wanted a car. By “wanted a car” I mean I wanted to get laid, so I resolved to have a car by the end of the year, and thus, a dream was born.
When you’re a teenager that wants shit without parents that are fond of buying you shit, you’re forced to get creative because a job paying minimum wage isn’t getting you shit. Don’t believe me? Do the math: a minor can work twenty hours a week during the school year, forty hours a week during vacation. If I worked every hour available, I’d have worked 480 hours in the summer and 800 hours during the school year. With a collective 1,280 hours at $5.15, I would earn somewhere around $5,200 after taxes. Sorry, but in the year 2000, there was no way I was getting laid in a 1984 Volkswagen Scirocco.
However, I could take the $250 I got in Christmas money (thanks, Grams), buy a half-pound of brick weed, sell thirty-two quarter-bags for $550 in profit, use the profit to buy a pound, sell four quarter-pounds for the same amount of profit, and then buy and flip a pound a week. At that rate I could buy a $20,000 car before Halloween and still have $250 in my pocket to wine and dine some lucky gal (thanks, grams).
The plan worked perfectly, but I’m still the only person I know who had three senior years. Resolutions are dirty, ugly beasts that tease the heartstrings of desire without any concern with what’s best for ya. Look, the year I resolved to stop fucking around on my wife was the year we got divorced. Can’t commit adultery if you’re not married. How about the year I resolved to use more public transportation? I caught a DUI.
I just don’t understand what’s so fucking magical about a single night in December that evokes feelings of unsubstantiated hope and expectation for the coming twelve months. You’re going to buy that house you always wanted? No you’re not; you’re going to embark upon crippling debt and over-extend your budget. You’re going to lose that extra bit of weight you’ve been carrying since you traded in booze for Jesus and bon-bons? Great, let me introduce you to crystal meth.
Why don’t you look at the track record? What you’re going to do is make an absurd promise to yourself far outside your wheelhouse of comfort and simplicity, spend the first week of January telling all your friends and co-workers about it, try it for two days, and then lie to your friends for a month until the subject doesn’t come up anymore. Here’s what you’ve resolved to do: feel like shit about yourself.
So from April forward you can misdirect all that frustration of self-loathing on the people you love the most, cry at movies that have unrealistic endings, and drunk-dial your friends on a Tuesday. You’re really nailing adulthood, Susan. Maybe you should send a picture of your tits to a college ex-boyfriend and ask if he misses you.
I only had one good stretch of keeping a New Year’s resolution; it lasted six years. In 2009, I resolved to never make another resolution. I thought it made perfect sense. Why would I subject myself to that bullshit year after year — getting my hopes up, lying to friends, hating myself, treating my family like shit — for what? Just to get brutally shit-housed on December 31, remind myself I can count backward from ten, and wake up smelling like piss?
The answer is yes. Resoundingly yes. We’re Americans — this is how we get shit done. If we’re content with last year, why the fuck would we change anything this year? January is National Self-Sabotage Month, and willful, hopeful participation is patriotic.
Thing is, I’m not really patriotic or big into change. It was a miserable twenty years learning that resolutions are just my natural way to make myself feel a little better about spending New Year’s Day on the couch in the good company of oreos and regret. So yesterday I made a bunch of promises: drink less, be kinder to strangers, stop booking dogfights at the animal shelters (seriously, you think the ASPCA was covering all their expenses?). I let those promises swirl in my head as I binge-watched some garbage television series, I let myself feel all warm and cozy inside, and I fell asleep to the peaceful sound of my resolutions fucking off to the recesses of my memory dump.
