New Year resolutions a distant memory
11th March, 2007
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Seems like just yesterday you were downing that one last bottle of cheap bubbly and kissing entirely the wrong person. January started so well, with all the resolutions written down, committed to memory, confided to friends. The hangover had barely passed before you were in the gym/phoning your mother more often/cleaning out the kitchen cupboards and being nicer to people at random.
It all went pretty well during that lovely lull between New Year's Day and Australia Day - not too much stress around at that time of year, even if you weren't one of those lazing back on a beach. Real life started again just after the long weekend and some of the resolutions had to be carved back a bit. All very well promising your best friend at 3am on 1st January that this would be the year you'd both master the Spanish language, push-up your way to great arm muscles and do more charity work, but it's all a bit silly in the cold, hard light of day. The gym is nothing more than an ultra-superficial microcosm of our twisted exhibitionist society anyway. Much better just going for a nice hard walk or a nasty, sweaty run. Brisbane has great exercise paths, and they're free. But then, there's the issue of personal safety and the fact that a run on a late summer's morning can remain a nasty experience for the whole day. Remarkable how a freshly showered and deodorised body can continue to sweat long after that extremely painful five kilometres is but a distant memory. At least those vows about treating family and friends better still stand. If only the bastards would be more appreciative of all the effort that goes into making them feel good. Their rather pitiful existences would be a whole lot easier if they'd just listen to a bit of advice once in a while. Or at very least they could confine their moments of need to times outside work hours that don't interfere too much with personal downtime. The charity work will happen. Absolutely. But of course you already do your bit and the regular financial donations have to count for something. Not too many attractive charities left anyway: the churches have too much money, the overseas aid organisations all seem tied to dodgy government programs, the soup kitchens demand unreasonable hours, the high-needs children need people with formal qualifications and you have to give the damn guide-dog foster puppies back. Another cheque is kinder in the long run. And as for intellectual improvement - does anyone other than the Spanish and various South Americans really speak Spanish anyway? Wouldn't it be more to the point to be a bit kinder to oneself? Perhaps a long hot bath once a week? A solo adventure holiday? A lost hour in the automotive catalogue section of the State Library? An evening with your wife and a bottle of vodka? Wouldn't it make even more sense to spend one evening every three months writing down all the things you've done in the past 12 weeks you actually like about yourself? You could start with the fact that you have the self-awareness to have acknowledged your faults on 31st December and have since analysed those faults and made peace with them. You take a look at your buttocks in the mirror, no smaller nor more toned than they were on the first morning of 2007, slap them, and as they vibrate to their own special rhythm, you could perhaps compose a little haiku to them. You could reach deep inside yourself and understand that the calendar year has no more meaning than any other artificial human construct. Or, like me, you could sigh, re-list your faults and start again. Like you always do at this time. Gonna be another long year at this rate. |
