by David Harrison
Everybody makes New Year's Resolutions. Lose weight, work harder, kick heroin, you know, the usual. I am no exception to this unfortunate group of people who curse themselves each New Year's Day with a set of insurmountable expectations. Oh sure, some people actually do lose weight or end their drug habit, but ever since I was old enough to formulate a New Year's Resolution, I've broken each of them in record time. Some examples from my past:
Age 5 – Build and maintain a Lego civilization, complete with a city hall, library, and fortress for defense. Ultimately, it proved no match for Lego space invaders.
Age 10 – Become the best player on my pee-wee basketball team. Unfortunately, that would require hours of practice. I think my average 3.5 points per game speaks for itself in terms of results.
Age 12 – Save up enough money to buy a Playstation. Now this one never even had a chance considering I started the year with zero dollars and had no source of income. I blamed the government. My parents bought me a Playstation to shut me up.
Age 16 – Become vegetarian. Forgot about it and ate an Egg McMuffin the next morning.
As I got older and wiser, I began making unrealistically easy New Year's Resolutions, just so I could feel the satisfaction of keeping one. Some favorites were:
Wake up every day this year.
Don't crash your car (failed).
Stay in school.
But then, I realized that the point of a New Year's Resolution was to supposedly make a change for the better, rather than not changing things that were currently okay… Which I still could barely handle, by the way. So my two choices are to either make a resolution I will never keep or make a resolution that is so stupid, it has no bearing on my life. In 2008, my New Year's Resolution is a combination of both. This year, I will officially stop making New Year's Resolutions on a go-forward basis… Until 2009.