Each new year, when we throw out our calendars, we resolve to discard some of our least favourite traits as well. When the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, it ushers in a new era of self-improvement and success. This year, we’ll call our parents once a week. We’ll learn to cook Thai food, we’ll host a dinner party, and we won’t drink while we write our papers. Well, we won’t drink while we write the second draft, at least.
The reality is that, each year, we resolve to improve ourselves and, each year, we fail. Some efforts may last for months, while some have surely already been abandoned. Tragically few are the resolutions that will last into the next year and beyond.
If you’re going to try and resolve to be better despite this unfortunate truth, prepare yourself for what most likely lies ahead. Find your favourite high and lofty resolution in the list below, and try to acknowledge a more easily achievable alternate reality into which it will eventually devolve. Because, let’s face it: changing is hard, and we don’t really want to.
RESOLUTION: WORK OUT
Go to the gym every day, get a six-pack, become attractive and successful.
REALITY: OR NOT
Head to the new Goldring Centre with the dream of working out like a pro. Experience five to 10 minutes of happiness by wearing your newly purchased brand-name workout clothes. Once actually in the gym, immediately become intimidated by the torture-like equipment. Also, the windows — that place has way too many windows.
Work out for a few minutes before reaching the inevitable conclusion that working out is just not your thing.
Never go to the gym again. Claim you’re too busy volunteering with sick baby animals or writing your first novel. Tell yourself that carrying your books to Robarts is a workout in itself.
RESOLUTION: EAT HEALTHIER
Eat healthier: more greens, less junk food. Learn to make quinoa, learn to pronounce quinoa, get a six-pack, become attractive and successful.
REALITY: EAT CONVENIENTLY
Buy a lot of kale. Remember that Beyoncé video and wonder where you can buy a kale-themed sweater. You’re healthy; you deserve it.
Shop online for clothes. Accidentally click on a link for take-out. Order enough Chinese food for a family of five because there’s a delivery minimum and you don’t want to walk three blocks to pick it up. Eat your way into a food coma; you’ll save the kale for tomorrow.
Wake up and make a green smoothie. Realize you only like smoothies made with vanilla ice cream. Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream to your green smoothie, then spill it down the sink after one sip. Never eat kale again. Heat up yesterday’s leftover fried rice for breakfast. Skip the deep-fried sweet-and-sour pork — you’re eating healthy after all.
RESOLUTION: BE AMBITIOUS
Get a kick-ass paid internship in your field; make your LinkedIn profile less pathetic.
REALITY: BE REALISTIC
Look at job postings in your field. Realize that you won’t even be qualified for them even after you graduate. Cry deeply. Look at unpaid positions. Realize that most of them will probably involve serving coffee. Get a job at Starbucks, and get paid to serve coffee. List this as “related experience” on your résumé. Cry deeply.
RESOLUTION: BE SOCIAL
Be more confident. Approach interesting people at bars. Meet the future love of your life. Ignore all urges to adopt more than one cat.
REALITY: BE A PET OWNER
Brainstorm pick-up lines with your friends. Try them out at a bar. Observe how the regular crowd purposefully ostracizes you. Try to woo a person of interest with adorably awkward dancing after assuring them that you’re not having a seizure. Obtain their phone number and ask them to go for coffee later. Fail to recognize them in the coffee shop because you only met them once in a dark bar. Recover from the initial awkwardness and proceed to have a somewhat pleasant time. Wonder endlessly if it’s a date, or if you even want it to be. Sneak off to the bathroom to look at pictures of cats.
