Lose weight! Go to the gym more! Be more assertive! Read more broadly! Get famous! Stop fucking swearing! Use fewer exclamation marks! Stop being tediously self-referential! But for god’s sake wait until January 1st!
New Year’s Resolutions can be a useful benchmark for goal-setting, but part of me thinks if people were really serious about making these changes, they would have done it already.
The idea of a new start in any sense can be appealing, a new relationship, a new house, a new job. It makes you think something will change, that if you just had that new TV, your life would be complete. Or if you just had that half a million pound house, you might finally be able to get your life in order. Obviously that’s nonsense, the idea that one specific thing will flip the switch on your life and give you the motivation you need to change everything.
It’s an acceptable form of procrastination, which comes with its own culture of knowing you’re not going to keep your promise. What was it about 2015 that stopped you from doing what you’re planning to do this year? Was it the odd number? Was it the discovery of water on Mars? Was it the confusing spelling of Terminator Genisys? You better hope they don’t bring out another Terminator film this year, you might end up losing your job. Terminator: Evylewtion could spell the end of Western Civilisation. At least working out how to spell the title nearly counts as reading more broadly.
So what’s so great about a new year? I imagine if I was alive before Christ I would have freaked out that years seemed to be counting down to something. January 1st in 1 B.C would have made me very anxious (I’m assuming the months and dates would go backwards as well), let alone the fact that everyone would somehow be getting younger every year.
In our enlightened time of numerically ascending calendars, the only the thing the next year can practically bring is another round of Christmas, birthdays and other date-based celebrations, as well as another excuse for millennials to freak about how long ago the 90s was.
But still, years are useful. Without them we wouldn’t know how long to wait before we’re supposed to care about the Olympics again. And obviously measures of time are indispensable, so how will 2016 be remembered?
It could be the year we agree on a solution for climate change, or it could be the year we find out kale is a very slow-acting poison. It could be the year you turn your whole life around, start playing an instrument, continue writing an excellent blog, finally escape the indignity of your teen years by growing out of your acne and into distinguished facial hair. Or it could be the year you go viral for shitting yourself on a train. That’s the fame sorted.
Years are a practicality, an arbitrary measure. Without resolutions, everything that’s been done will still have been done, but maybe sooner and with less guilt. If you want to change something, just do it. Telling people about your big plans can to some extent satisfy the urges to actually carry them out. So get cracking, tell no-one and throw away your calendar (you’ve probably got one on your phone anyway).
Don’t let 2016 be an excuse to create a ‘new you’ in the sort of way that gyms, slimfast and the kindle store can commodify. If you need the last number on a calendar to change in order to motivate yourself to do something, then you’re in luck, it’s a new year. But don’t pick something just out of ceremony or something meaningless. Go big, and mean it. That was assertive enough wasn’t it? F**k it, I’m off to the gym.
Next time on the Bandwagon, can cabbage be gay?
Tim Goodings' Bandwagon 
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