Lights. Trees. Presents. Gluttonous consumption.
When December rolls around, many of these seasonal funstuffs spring to mind, but let’s face it: 2012 is right around the corner and so is your annual New Year’s resolution. Instead of convincing yourself that you’ll stop drinking, smoking, eating or insert-your-vice-here, how about we just all stop lying to ourselves and give it up already?
Like every other breathing person in America, Thanksgiving left me with a lackadaisical feeling of laziness I had long forgotten since…well, last Thanksgiving. I’m sure you know it well – that nagging feeling deep down that speaks volumes about how incredibly spoiled and excruciatingly indulgent we Americans are during the Holidays. Once the last bite of Mom’s delicious sausage and apple stuffing (mmm…stuffing) has been chewed, swallowed, and digested, panic soon sets in. “With Christmas right around the corner, I’ll just set it on cruise control through December and I’ll hit it hard come January!”
Yeah, right!
Carb-less, tasteless foods may soon become your new best friends. Fruits, veggies, and all of those weird faux-meat protein supplement thingies. Some are delicious and nutritious, but when Day 5 hits of whatever cult-like diet plan you started, you mostly want to say “screw it” and bail. Whether you fool yourself into believing your new-found health mantras or not, let’s cut to the chase: New Year’s resolutions are bullshit.
Believe me, there is nothing I treasure more than some hearty procrastination. Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow, right? This applies to many of life’s inconsequential happenings: laundry, grocery shopping, homework, that work project that you should do today, but isn’t really due until the day after tomorrow. But New Year’s resolutions are mostly for people who weren’t going to do that shit anyways. Quit smoking cold turkey? Read more books? Visit your grandparents more? You can do all of this shit today if you really wanted to. These are examples of life decisions that should not be put off until tomorrow. Why wait a month before jumping on the bandwagon of life?
OK. Sorry to get all Yoda on you.
I harp on the weight-loss health-thing because most resolutions tend to center around them. I begrudgingly became a gym member after my extra college weight I didn’t bother losing became all meshed with the extra unemployment weight I didn’t bother losing. Today, I work out in spurts and am usually plus or minus about 12 pounds, around a weight I deem reasonable. When I try really hard and kill it at the gym (by “kill it,” I mean step inside of Planet Fitness more than once a week. I know…what dedication!), it helps curb my eating and get me motivated. But dammit, I love eating. I also love binging, drinking and eating wings until I’m about to pass out like a baby that just finished its bottle.
This past September, I even went so far as completing a two-week detox, consuming nothing but fruits, vegetables, nuts, water with lemon, and other glorious antioxidants. Though mentally and physically satisfying, calling a spade a spade is one of my favorite things to do: It fucking sucked. But at least I didn’t put it off until the new year, and didn’t BS myself into saying I’d eventually get to it when a contagious disease wiped out a majority of our population and food became so scarce that we had to loot for it, all while avoiding a rampant swarm of killer zombies feeding on the world. If you’re running for your life and eating less than half a day’s calories because it’s been weeks since your last looting, anything is possible! Sorry, I don’t really know where I was going with that one…
Live your life how you want to. Get motivated on your own terms. Go on a diet. Limit your smokes to one a day. Spend less money Internet shopping. Cut down on your YouTube-ing. Better yet, cut down on the porn. Do anything you want to! But why not do it today? Or don’t. What do I care?
I’m not trying to say that goals aren’t helpful toward reaching desired results, but don’t feed me lines about how the New Year is going to be miraculously different from the day before. Because the next time someone carries on about their laundry list of resolutions-to-be, I’m calling shenanigans.
