Some Old Thoughts on the New Year

I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions. They always seem like a great way to ensure whatever inevitable failure they precede is a public one. Like many others, I’m not immune to the appeal of a clean slate and/or taking stock of things. But a change of the calendar never feels like a satisfactory way to realize a new start.

Perhaps this is due to personal experience.

Due to temporary overabitiousness I joined a gym after the New Year once. I quit 4 months later.

Due to temporary insanity I slid down the waterslide at the Scott Metzer pool into 42 degree water at the Pfreeze Pflop a few New Years ago. I’m still cold.

Due to temporary impetuousness as a teenager I dropped out of school after New Years to become a pipefitter. I permanently gave up pipefitting days later.

But, you may argue, dropping out of school and submerging your body in frigid water are wholesale changes that clearly deserve more thought than an impulsive New Year’s resolution.

You could argue it’s unfair for me to poo-poo New Year's just because I’ve personally used it exceptionally well as an excuse to do dumb things or exceptional poorly to do undumb things.

Conceding this, there’s still a whole culture around New Year’s celebration that rings hollow.

For one, it always seemed short-sighted to me to party like crazy New Year’s Eve and then start the New Year with a hangover. Nothing says let’s trash last year’s final memory by thinking back on it with the New Year's first head-pounding, nauseous one.

Also, black eyed peas? Um, no thanks. I’m not a vegetarian, a masochist, or superstitious so I see no reason to partake. Even if I were superstitious, I’d take the bad luck over the bad taste in my mouth.

Then you have the whole fireworks at midnight that can wake the kids or potentially set the house on fire. At midnight, I’m not even sure which one is worse.

You also have the endless “best of the year” lists, televised discussions of the ball dropping, people saying “I can’t believe it’s [insert whatever year it is here], and creeping sense that it’s only too true that last year did go faster than the year before.

So I’m not doing it. No resolutions, no parties, and certainly no icy plunges into the pool. I’m ringing in the New Year the way a parent should: asleep.