“Normally, I’d put on a festive hat and celebrate the fact that the Earth has circled the sun one more time. I really didn’t think it was going to make it this year, but darn it if it wasn’t the little planet that could all over again.” - Hugh Laurie as Dr. House
Like most of the other 6.5 billion people on the planet, I’m useless at keeping New Year’s resolutions. If I had kept to any of the resolutions I’ve made over the last decade or so, I’d be smarter, funnier, healthier, a better writer, less shy, a better cartoonist, richer, and more confident. I may have improved slightly in a couple of those areas - for example, I’d like to think I’m a little funny. But it’s still nothing to brag about, and since they stopped making Friends and funny episodes of The Simpsons, I’m rapidly running out of comedy material to steal and use as my own.
But being the optimistic person that I am, that’s not going to stop me from making one this year - and this time, I’m going to write them down here, in the hope that the people who read this blog (either because I forced you to, because you accidentally clicked the wrong link on Google, or because you just want to make funny comments), will join me in eventually forgetting all their resolutions in a couple of days’ time.
My problem is that I don’t finish things I’ve started. Proof of this is the fact that I could steal the opening two paragraphs and title of this post from one I wrote exactly one year ago, safe in the knowledge that no-one would notice, because I didn’t keep the blog going long enough to maintain a readership. So this year, I’ve taken this into account - with my resolution being to try at least 100 new things before the year is out. That way, even if I don’t follow through with any of them, or none of them work out, I can at least say I’ve added one hundred new anecdotes to my pool of experiences…
Inspired by the recent string of Sainsbury’s adverts, my original resolution was to “Try Something New Today”, every day, for a full year. But I soon realised that something that ambitious is somewhat prone to failure, which is why I reduced it to 100. That way, I only have to average two new things a week (Sure, I’m optimistic, but that doesn’t mean I’m not also lazy as hell…). So there were a couple of “new things” I had in mind, which weren’t quite big enough to make the top 100 - examples including keeping a blog, using random phrases (such as Awesome! That totally rocks! and ending sentences with ‘man’), learning to use less sarcasm, and starting a music collection. But I’ll probably try some of those things, too - after all, I do have three hundred and sixty five days…
So with that in mind, I’d like to finish by hoping, in a completely non-sarcastic way, that your 2007 totally rocks.
