Coffee and cigarettes: just two of the things you shouldn’t resolve to quit. I?m making a resolution this year: not to make any more resolutions as clichd or as frigid as the air outside. January is coming, and like every other January, it will be miserable: death winds, snow mountains, apocalyptic grey skies. In other words, not the best time of year to tell yourself “no” to almost anything that makes life bearable. I say, go easy on yourselves and cave into the inevitable. Here are just a few of the resolutions you shouldn?t bother with and why. 1. Work out more (or at all). You should exercise, yes, but talking about it is as dull as conversations about the weather (in the winter it?s cold, in the summer it?s not; covered?) or what you had for lunch. Everyone has a pedantic friend who drivels on about how unhealthy they feel if they skip the elliptical for a day. If you’re saying you need more exercise, you either: a) do plenty already; b) will stop “hitting the gym” two weeks after you start. Instead: resolve to take the stairs instead of the escalator and don?t respond to every slightly tiresome situation by saying “fuck it, let?s take a cab.” 2. Go on a diet. What are we talking about here: more tofu? Less soy milk? No meat? All meat? I mean, we all know diets are boring and built for obsoletion. And when you do break it, you?ll immediately raise the same mass-produced goop to your lips and say “well, I?m not on a diet anymore!” A good life is about balance and making choices, not eating cardboard. Instead: eat your breakfast, pack your lunch, and try resisting the current fad of putting bacon on everything (bacon-topped ice cream sandwiches! Actually, that sounds good). 3. Get in touch with old friends. People! We covered this one when you first joined Facebook, remember? Your old school friends or work buddies are now actively pursing an infectiously boring existence, or conversely, more successful than you?d like. Instead: start talking more, or talking better, to the friends you currently have. Strive for deeply intimate gestures like, I don’t know, picking up the phone? 4. Make an effort to meet your neighbours. Your neighbours are almost certainly weird and possibly dangerous. If you had anything in common with them you?d probably be friends already. Have you never seen a thriller from the 80s? They?re either Soviet spies or burying people in their basement. Just keep on track, the way you were going, and maybe, if you’re lucky, they’ll ignore you. Instead: talk to your family more. They ain?t perfect, but at least you know all their dirty secrets (and where they buried the bodies). 5. Pay bills/get rich. I?m going to take a giant leap of reasoning here and say that if you could pay off your plastic, you would have already. No one sits there saying “I really have to stop getting in the way of myself making trillions this year.” You can?t make a resolution to be richer. Believe me, I?ve tried, and all I’ve found is that you actually have to work for that. Instead: resolve to stop buying every piece of new, stupid, glittering, well-marketed crap you see on Twitter. 6. Quitting. This could be any one of numerous unhealthy vices you?ve been promising to leave behind: just do it already, and stop talking about it. Setting yourself an arbitrary deadline to quit something that?s detrimental to your health is like standing in front of a speeding train and saying to yourself “okay, in fifteen minutes I’ll move.” It?s not a resolution, it?s common sense. Instead: take up an extremely complex and dangerous hobbie like climbing K2 or deep sea exploration of the Mariana Trench. You?ll be too preoccupied with simple things like surviving to worry about, or indulge in, your vices. Good luck, and happy new year. JJ Thompson is a man about town with a camera in one hand and a pen in the other. He is the founder of popular events site The Compendium Daily; follow @CompendiumDaily for the site and @jjtho for the man.
