Children Of The Resolution

As it’s New Year’s Day I find myself, as I do most years, compiling a list of stuff that I need to start doing in the coming year in order to make myself somewhat less inadequate.

Most years, fully aware that any genuine attempt at self-improvement will inevitably be doomed to failure within a few short hours of me completing said list of goals, I have taken to writing insincere resolutions on these pages, mainly for comic effect.

Last year I hit a particular low in this endeavour, when I wrote a list of resolutions that mainly centered around me watching the movie Space Jam. And the worst thing about that post is that, one year on, I still haven’t seen either the original 1996 iteration, nor have I seen the 2021 sequel – Space Jam: A New Legacy. Weirdly though, I did buy a Space Jam themed basketball top, which I wore quite a lot last summer. I don’t play basketball. I don’t know why I bought the top. It is pretty comfortable in hot weather and bizarrely we had quite a lot of hot weather for a UK summer but I’m still not sure it was an entirely appropriate purchase. I might get around to watching the movies in 2023. But that definitely won’t be my resolution for this year, because whether I wrote that post for comic effect or not, you’d imagine I could have gotten around to watching two relatively short movies in order to offer some kind of conclusion to last year’s efforts.

But I didn’t, so I’m not going down that road this year.

Instead I thought I might buck the trend and set myself some actual goals for this year. Unambitious goals naturally, because the last thing I want to do is set myself up to fail, but goals I might like to achieve nonetheless.

I’m not sure this is going to hit the ‘comedy highs’ of my nonsensical ramblings about Space Jam but I would like to be better at stuff so perhaps it’s time to share those ambitions in blog form in a rare show of sincerity. Here goes nothing:

1. Lose some weight. Any amount of weight. I’ve weighed the same for the last five years in spite of having started doing quite a lot of exercise over the last three years. I can only conclude that I need to make some dietary changes. And maybe drink less beer. This will be hard. I like food and I like beer and I have a lot of both in the house at the moment. But I am overweight by anyone’s definition and that probably isn’t the wisest lifestyle choice as I head towards my mid-forties. I’m not going to put a number on this, but if I weigh a tiny bit less on the 1st January 2024 I think that would probably be a good thing. Obviously I need to do something about all the food and beer that is currently in the house so I think the best thing to do would be to spend January 2023 binging on all of that and then start on the weight loss journey in February. That seems like a pretty foolproof plan right?
2. Write more. Ideally write that novel that I’m always saying I’ll write. But at the very least post more regularly on this blog. I like writing. It make me happy. I like to think that my writing sometimes amuses other people too. But the important thing is it makes me happy and I didn’t do enough of it in 2022.
3. Keep fit. I think I am pretty fit now, in spite of the aforementioned weight-loss difficulties, but I used to be very fit and then I became fairly unfit in my thirties without realising it had happened. I prefer being fit. It’s good to be able to keep up with my lively eldest daughter and she’s only getting livelier as time goes on, so I need to stay at the top of my game. Obviously keeping fit would be easier if I enjoyed exercise. I assumed that after three years of working out regularly that I might have found some level of pleasure in the pain by now. But I haven’t. So really I’m just committing to another year of being miserable. Which seems like a stupid thing to do.
4. Spend less money. As the cost of living goes through the roof, I imagine this will be challenging, but I’m not averse to impulse purchases (the Space Jam basketball top is probably a good indicator of this) and I’d really like to have more money for things like a new kitchen, given that my current kitchen seems to be falling apart. I’m not sure all of my frivolous purchases would necessarily add up to the cost of a new kitchen, but I’ve got to start somewhere. I know a new kitchen is relatively boring, but I would be happy to make a concession on this and go for a Space-Jam themed kitchen if that would in some way help to make it a reality.
5. Enjoy the moment. Not necessarily this particular moment. But some moments. I think I might be one of those people that is so concerned with the future that they forget to enjoy the present. Maybe I’ll just end up finding out that the moment is actually rubbish and therefore impossible to enjoy but it would nice to have a little more certainty about this.

There you go. A list of resolutions with a modicum of sincerity. Does that sincerity mean I’ll achieve any of them?

Or I will I continue to be an overweight man who drinks too much beer while wearing sports tops with abstract cinematic themes?

Only time will tell.