Resolute
continuity in the new year
It’s only when I revisit resolutions past, for the sake of this column, that I realise I’ve been setting the same intention for the past half a decade. ‘Stop picking skin on thumbs when stressed’ features on every one of five new year resolution lists littering my Google Keep. I did manage it for a several months in 2023, if I remember correctly, or maybe it was 2024. The ragged and torn epidermis around my nail beds was briefly whole and healed; I recall looking at the newly smooth expanse with pride. But something must have prodded me back into a state of vibrating anxiety, and I began to lay siege to my poor little hands once more. This year we go again.
My track record with the resolutions I devise at the outset of a new year tends to be patchy. It’s not that I don’t like setting goals. I’m a real hog for it actually. But the middle of winter doesn’t feel like a natural time to overhaul your life, or embark on a major adventure. Plus, you haven’t yet got a handle on the demands of the next 12 months. Often, things only swim into focus with a bit more time — then you can adjust targets accordingly. Last year, for example, featured several substantial changes to my life, including a reverse relocation, a large property-related purchase, a new role, finishing the first version of a big project and returning to therapy after nearly four years. None of these were things I could foresee in my future from the obscured vantage point of 1 January.
Honestly, at the start of a new year, all that’s really on my mind is maintenance. In the past, I’ve worried that such an approach is boring, and tried to counteract the impulse with a smattering of random resolutions, completely unmoored from my life as it is. Think having sex in public or going to America. It’s not that these are particularly outlandish aspirations — I have been to America multiple times (no comment on the other one) — but when such resolutions featured in my new year lists, there was absolutely no context for their inclusion, nor a genuine desire to realise them. So I did not.
This creates a situation where one has manufactured failure from thin air, unable to achieve an objective that doesn’t really exist. At the close of the year, I would cast an eye over neat bullet points proclaiming my desire to ‘do anal’ and ‘learn French properly’ and think ‘why on earth did I want to do that?’ The answer was simple: I didn’t. I just thought I should.
