When I was a child January seemed to be the worst month of the year. It was dark and cold, and the adults complained about being broke and blue. All that Christmas cheer had died overnight, and our parents who had been silly and dizzy for a month, were now serious and grudgingly trying to improve themselves.
New Year’s Resolutions were straight forward back then because ‘wellnesses’ didn’t exist in the 90’s, so when January came along all they had to do was to be healthy.
Common 90’s resolutions:
- Lose ½ a stone.
- Jog for 20 minutes
- Stop eating chocolate.
- Cut down to one cigarette a day.
- No alcohol for 30 days and 30 nights.
All of these were attempted with utter misery of course.
Millennials however love January. A whole month dedicated to personal development? BRING IT ON! We’re so good at wellness that it’s hard to know how to develop oneself even more. Besides, we’ve already dealcoholized every spirit, created burgers out of cauliflower and carved our bodies like statues. What more could we possibly improve?
Well, our resolutions have gone a little left field. Examples include:
- Don’t use any single use plastics.
- No Instagram for 30 days and 30 nights. (GASP).
- Take a cold shower when you wake up.
- Meditate for 20 minutes every day.
- Journal each morning for your self development.
Journalling is a big one for us Millennials.
I can’t imagine sitting at the kitchen table as a child, and watching dad write down his thoughts and feelings in a diary. Yet a generation on, here we all are with our leather-bound notebooks recording our moods and reactions.
“Yesterday I snapped at Pete. I’m not proud of this, but I felt my boundaries were tested when he invited his mother to our mediation class. My dear mother-in-law, Debra, means well, but her breathing is too loud, and I see no point in her meditating for an hour if she is just going to drink a triple shot of Gordon’s after the class.”
I have friends who swear by daily journaling. I’m not a fan. I treat journaling like an art gallery, not inspecting every single piece on the wall, but rather stopping when something catches my eye. I’ll write down a funny quote, or if something big happens, but feel no obligation to write a paragraph about my self-check-out experience at Sainsbury’s.
That’s not to say I haven’t given it a go in some form. At one point I decided it would be good to remind myself that life is short, so I wrote down a list every night under the title “If I died tomorrow I would…”
But after a week I got bored, and kind of morbid.
My resolution of 2024 is the opposite to journalling and was made up at 3 am on New Year’s Day. I was sharing a posh bag of crisps (the one where the black pepper is visible), with a city boy named Joe. He asked me if I had a resolution, and I sat there thinking about it for a long, long while, and then ended up saying, “to stop overthinking things.” It wasn’t a good start.
What I mean by ‘not overthinking’ , is to not doubt myself when sending that email, attending that event, or reaching out to someone. I have learnt that more times than not, something positive will happen when you, ‘just go for it’.
Still, I am guilty of hovering over that send button for far too long. If this was a therapy session, a shrink may say something about the fear of rejection. No doubt it would then circle back to my childhood trauma when I tried to be a stand-up comedian in Lanzarote.
Other 2024 resolutions include:
- To wait until the nail polish is dry before putting on my socks.
- To not ruin my mum’s glass of Minuty by lecturing her on the health implications of alcohol.
- To try karaoke for the first time. (I’m thinking Blur Parklife … the 90s was crap for wellness but incredible for music).
“I’m going to put more effort into finding this normal man,” my friend Amy said whilst we ate brunch last weekend. (If you haven’t read Amy’s requirement for Mr Normal, then please read about it here).
A couple of hours later I invited her to a New Year’s party which was going to be chocker block full of single men. She thanked me for the invite but was going to give it a miss.
Again, not a good start.
Blog Soundtrack
THE QUACK 