Welcome to the new year, your new year, my new year. It’s also a brand new decade, would you Adam and Eve it, and the fourth one I’ve personally ushered in. Not a fact upon which I’m inclined to dwell too long or hard.
I trust everybody is refreshed, and has adequately recovered from the season’s over-indulgences? After all, how else are we to demonstrate our love for the little lord Jesus than by eating and drinking so much that we are literally sick? (That wasn’t just me, right?) What better way is there of carrying out the mandatory end-of-year worship of the chap who brought us the combined gifts of self-loathing, a profound fear of the future, rudimentary carpentry, and an annual excuse for Jeremy Clarkson to ‘write’ another hugely insightful treatise on what’s wrong with anyone who isn’t him, than by compiling an Amazon wish list, maxing out our credit cards, and exercising grotesque levels of consumption as though it were our birthright? None, that’s what.
Anyhoo, it’s a new year; a new start, and now that I’ve sufficiently recovered from my own seasonal excesses, I feel able to confront this century’s pre-adolescent phase with a sense of hope that remarkably manages to spring forth in defiance of it being the winter’s bleakest month. So long as the old saw that states an intention to start as one means to go on doesn’t require too strict adherence (as that would mean, in my case, spending the year semi-conscious in a drunken stupor, crying, and with jazz hands that could shake the life back into Elvis), then I’m hot to trot.
In a break from my usual eschewing of the early January tradition that sees many making To-Do lists of self-improvement, commonly trotted out in the form of ‘New Year’s Resolutions’ (typically by folk who are eternally resilient to having thus far failed to honour a single promise to themselves, and who generally massively over-estimate their ability to stay away from lard-based foodstuffs), I’ve decided to embrace the spirit of looking optimistically to the future, and set myself some goals for the year ahead. I usually shy away from the ritualistic yearly opportunity to demonstrate my will-power deficiency, opting instead for a perennial, more protracted display of my failure to operate on even the most perfunctory levels.
However, ‘tis, undeniably, the season to follow one’s dreams, and dreams, as the amblyopic high-priestess of pop Gabrielle once warbled, can come true. Sadly, the continuing earthly existence of Jeremy Clarkson bears weary testimony to the fact that, where my dreams are concerned, this is rarely true. But undeterred by such setbacks, here I bravely go…
So, alongside all the standard platitudes about getting fit, losing weight, drinking less, etc, I am also, in my wide-eyed aspirational naivety, going to include the following endeavours toward the new, improved me:
1. Make a list of books to read/re-read*. Read them.
*Otherwise relatively vice-free, I physically cannot walk past a book shop without making at least one impulsive purchase. Unfortunately, I am also a glacially slow reader these days, and very easily distracted. The number of unread and half read books in my possession bothers me enormously so I resolve here and now to make a list of twelve books to get through between now and next noel.
2. Finish the course I began back in 2006.*
*In my defence I have managed to complete two other courses during this hiatus, and the whole ‘getting-divorced-and-having-to-move-house-seven-times’ thing meanwhile contributed to my lack of dedication to this particular educational path. But a commitment is a commitment, right?
3. Significantly ramp up my level of Tory bashing.*
*While I realise that some people (who probably won’t be reading this so who cares?) may object to this in the interests of balance, and while I’m all in favour of a bit of non-partisan political prick baiting, I feel compelled to point out that this is an election year, and wherever there’s a Tory putting itself front and centre (and this being an election year, you can count on it being frequently) I will be ready with a withering riposte to their wind-baggery. Balance can go fuck itself. This is war so saddle up.
4. Rediscover old talents,* foster new ones.**
*I’m told I have a bit of a flair for drawing and what-not. Unfortunately, due to the hateful attitude I was exposed to as a youth: that any activity not directly exploitable for financial gain is necessarily a waste of time, I’m ashamed to say that I all but abandoned the pursuit. I’ve since had an epiphany in the realisation that the most effective rebellion against this act of juvenile oppression is to spend my thirties as an unemployed aspiring artist. Hoorah!
** I have currently at my disposal two perfectly good acoustic guitars, yet a repertoire of approximately four chords. While this renders me a tad over-qualified for membership of a Status-Quo tribute outfit, it renders the guitars as nothing more than a pair of elaborate dust traps.
5. Eat more chocolate.
Yeah, you heard.
6. Urban Farming.
Self explanatory, really.
So, that’s it. That’s the list. As you were…
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