Tag Archives: New Year’s resolutions

If You’re Gonna Fail at New Year’s Resolutions, Fail BIG

January 1, 2014 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , 3 Comments

personal reboot, relaunch, restart

All the typing in this entry is new, but my MS Paint gag is a rerun from last year, not unlike the average person’s New Year’s resolutions.

It’s January 1st once more, which means it’s time to reinvent your entire life from scratch yet again. Gone are those halcyon days when people awoke on New Year’s Day, looked in the mirror, and thought to themselves, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!” Alas, this holiday dispels contentment, disregards recent successes, assumes the worst in you, and demands you rethink your life now. Not on February 14th or June 22nd, or some random day in otherwise meaningless August, but now, because federal law mandates that Things can only begin on January 1st.

I’ve never been great with New Year’s resolutions. I can’t think of the last one I ever even chose, let alone the last time I actually attained one. Though we see renewal symbolized in the rough annual transition from Father Time and his 365-day reign of terror to Baby New Year and his inevitable future letdown, beginning my personal transitions on a meaningful date has never worked for me. My most successful diet began on a July 5th. I proposed to my wife on December 26th. I was baptized on the Sunday after a Thanksgiving. My first comic book was given to me sometime in a December. I had to start wearing glasses one nameless summer month. The forces of change laugh at our puny human concept of calendars.

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Is It Time to Reboot Your Franchise for the New Year?

January 1, 2013 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

personal reboot, relaunch, restartAll around you are family, friends, and strangers using the excuse of a new January 1st to restart, relaunch, or reboot their lives. You may doubt their sincerity, their dedication, or their grasp on reality, but you’re not in charge of their story arcs. For whatever reason, they’ve decided their “series” needs to begin again from scratch. Some of them aren’t so sure about what they’re doing, but they firmly believe the results will justify the scheme. Some of them will be wrong, but it’s possible a few of them may be on to something.

What if they’re right? What if it works and they win? Can you steal their idea after the fact and hope no one notices? And how can tell when it’s your turn to end your current numbering and start over from ? Check your life for one or more of the following warning signs:

* Situations and struggles have become so predictable, what once took you twenty-two minutes to solve now takes only two.

* The world around you seems poorly drawn, as if the architect of your universe is distracted and rushing to get each day over with.

* Every other day you’re butting heads with the same arch-nemesis again and again and again, as if there’s nothing better for you to do.

* Your best friends nag you about how your life has become too boring to follow, and keep writing long essays about how they’d make your life 100 times better if they were in charge.

* Your last few decades’ worth of continuity have become so convoluted that you now have multiple conflicting memories of singular events, all impossible to reconcile with each other.

* You find yourself saddled against your will with one or more lame, whiny sidekicks.

* You have a tiny, hardcore group of supporters who think you’re winning at life, but deep down you wish you could sacrifice them all, sell out, and appeal to a much wider, younger, shallower, less discerning audience instead.

* Everyone else around you is doing it, and hopping on bandwagons is cool.

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