New Year's Resolution - None

I have this problem with New Year's Resolutions (see, I'm even capitalising the blooming thing!) - they heap loads of pressure on me and it makes me feel like crap when I don't come up to scratch.  Which is pretty much with any New Year's resolution (small 'r': I can feel the pressure decreasing already...)

Except for the last one, yonks ago now.  Hah!  It was not to do that to me again: decide that my new NYR was going to be to... stop smoking, lose weight, do this, do that... I might have even decided on nice things, like going to a photographic exhibition some time during the year, or something equally appealing.  What happened instead of attaining this wonderful glow of achievement? Un-unh, nada.  Exactly.  Whenever a ny Resolution looms over me like a threatening shadow, I cower and wilt.

Just that.  It really seems to be the sheer weight of all this -Expectation-!  I can't deal with that.  All I want to do is the opposite of whatever I wanted to achieve.  Instead of stopping smoking I'd smoke more, instead of losing weight I'd get stuck into all the stuff I hoped to go easy on, instead of an interesting exhibition I couldn't even muster the energy to find out what was on.

Enough, no more!  I'm not putting myself through that again.

And besides, being able to keep that very last resolution (to not have any more) does fill me with that warm, fuzzy feeling of smug achievement.

You can't beat that.

So I won't.


There's something else that beats all the chest-beating and hair tearing: doing the stuff you want to do gradually.  And best of all: whenever you actually feel like it!

Stopping smoking: yup, done it*!  (I can't even begin to tell you how utterly proud of myself I am, I'm still rather blown away by the fact that I managed that and it's been ...oh my god! Six years! Has it really been that long?) - losing weight, uh, don't expect too much of me here, come on!  That one is still a work in progress.

I achieved some things, others are ongoing.  But at least it's without all that pressure and expectation.  And it's a lot more fun to pop into an exhibition because you realise there and then that you feel like it...

Hold up the mirror and clutch the garlic, zzzzzh!  No more 'nyr' for me.

PS: here's where the * comes in: I'll do a separate blog post about how I managed to stop smoking, I love talking about that.  That warm fuzzy glow again!

PS2: I really love it when I surprise myself by doing something that I thought would take a long time to rev up to: I started this blog, even at the close of the year!  It is an absolutely lovely feeling to achieve something when you least expect it of yourself.  Hurrah to spontaneity!