I’ve been trying to ignore January by pretending the the clean slate of a new year was still an option but it’s been a fool’s mission. 2022 arrived and its resemblance to 2020 and 2021 is disheartening. This new year got a lackluster reception at my house, it arrived while I was sleeping and I’ve been avoiding eye contact ever since.
I remember when we brought in a new year with style, when we counted down the seconds to its arrival with enthusiasm and had the gusto to live up to resolutions we made until at least the end of January. Not so much these days.
This year I resolved not to resolve. So far I’ve been living up to that resolution like a champ. I haven’t started a diet or an exercise regime, I haven’t written a word in over a month – I haven’t done one damn thing. I’m getting nowhere fast – my motivation has flown the coop and I’m bored as hell.
One new year in the days of yore, when January did inspire impossible resolutions and I was young enough to believe that I could live up to them, my sister-in-law and I signed up for eight sessions of Pilates. The class was taught by a Russian woman named Svetlana who was as intense as her name suggests. Svetlana could contort her body into positions that boggled the mind – effortlessly twisting and holding poses for impossible lengths of time. She told us that with strict practice we could learn to do the same. My sister-in-law and I had no such aspirations.
I didn’t get a perfect attendance certificate at the end of those classes nor did I acquire any skills that have stood the test of time but we did have a few laughs as I watched that particular new year’s resolution dissolve.
I’ve never been great at keeping promises to myself but I’ve been inclined to make them just the same. I used to compose a list of good intentions every January only to find twelve months later I was still packing extra pounds, my intentions were not even remotely fulfilled and I couldn’t hold a Pilates pose to save my life – but at least I’d made an effort.
This has left me wondering if an unfulfilled resolution might be better than no resolution at all – even a half-assed attempt at Pilates would be more exciting than keeping my current status quo. So with that in mind I’ve decided to accept 2022 for the doppelgänger it is and break this year’s new resolve today. We may be living in the boring twenties but that doesn’t mean I have to be boring too.