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I think in terms of the day's resolutions, not the years'.
—Henry Moore
I don't believe in New Year's resolutions. I think if you want to change something, change it today and don't wait until the New Year.
—Georgina Bloomberg
Motivation levels differ person to person, as does the time since failing new year resolutions.
—Konnie Huq |
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This newsletter is scheduled for January 4, so, statistically, 95% of you have failed at least one New Year's Resolution.
Okay, yes, I just made that number up on the spot. I didn't resolve to be more active in fact-checking my attempts at comedy.
But the point remains that every year, a whole lot of people who are not me decide to make unreasonable demands on themselves in an attempt at self-improvement.
There's nothing wrong with self-improvement. It's just that you go about it the wrong way. Since you know you're going to fail all of your resolutions, maybe try using a little bit of reverse psychology on yourself. For example, you could make the following resolutions:
I will cancel my gym membership. You're not using it anyway, except for maybe one hour that feels like seven on January 2, and you could be using that money to fund something that actually improves your life, such as tequila. But since you know you're going to fail at the resolution to cancel, maybe it'll motivate you to finally visit the medieval torture chamber (I'm only half-joking here; the treadmill was used as a punishment for criminals ).
Speaking of tequila,
I will drink more booze. The thinking here is that if you try to drink more, you will fail. This happened to me last year, and the year before, only with beer. I still haven't matched my 2020 drinking records. To be fair, 2020 sucked for a lot of us, but beer, as always, made it slightly tolerable.
I will order delivery pizza every day. The problem with deciding you're going to do something every day is that life happens, and you'll inevitably miss a day, and thus lose your motivation. If it's pizza, though, you might eventually get sick of the stuff, or at least run out of money for tips. I mean, I wouldn't get sick of it, but you're not me.
I won't write this year. We writers often resolve to finally get around to that novel, or a query letter, or a daily blog entry. And then you fail and play games. I'm a big fan of games, but the surest way to get that writing done is to tell yourself you won't do it. This makes it the Forbidden Fruit, so of course you're going to write. (Yes, I've done a blog entry every day for over three years now, but I never said, "I'm going to do this every day." It just happened.)
I won't care about <insert persistent societal problem here>. I mean, you don't, anyway. You may say you do, but you watched the World Cup last year even though you knew damn well it was built on the backs of underpaid laborers living in prison-like situations. And, worse, they banned booze at the last minute, after accepting sponsorships from manufacturers of fermented and/or distilled adult beverages. But you don't care; you watched it anyway, thus encouraging advertisers to continue to support these conditions. If you admit to yourself that you don't care, then maybe, just maybe, you will.
The best things about these resolutions is that even if you don't fail them, at least you'll be happier about it because you stuck to your promises to yourself. So even though you've failed your New Year's resolutions for 2023, it's not to late to make some new ones. Just don't tell anyone. "Stop lying" is a crap resolution anyway. After all, you can't write fiction without it. |
A few laughs to kick off your year:
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A quick note before I get into comments from my December newsletter:
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Last time, in "The Joy of Nothing" , I talked about the wonders of doing nothing special in December.
oldgreywolf scribbles  : Christmas: An invention of the Roman Empire (christianized) in the 4th Century AD, based in the activities of Bishop Nicholas of Myra, to change the German Peoples' pagan mid-winter (25 Dec) celebration to Wödin (the Yule), to christian activity.
It kind of worked.
Now we have faith-based joint celebration of the Yule and Christmas, and few know the reason for either.
Many Indigenous People don't celebrate christmas, thanksgiving, easter, or Columbus day.
Too bad Columbus wasn't discovered lost at sea by the Caribs. They were cannibals.
May you and yours enjoy long, happy, healthy lives.
Eh, he probably would have given them indigestion. Which now that I think of it is probably better than what actually happened to them.
Annette  : My youngest son has started making video game inspired tree ornaments with a 3-D printer in college. Now I have want to buy him a tree so he can display them.
Hopefully nothing bad happens.
I have it on good authority that palm trees make lousy holiday ornament-hangers.
So that's it for me for January! See you next month. Until then,
LAUGH ON!!!
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Comedy: January 04, 2023 Issue [#11738]
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