Why I love January

January always makes me want to go out and buy stationery, wrap textbooks in plastic and notebooks in wrapping paper.  But my favourite part of January is starting a new diary - filling it with important dates to remember and peoples birthdays, writing inspirational quotes in the margins.  I always use January 1st to write my New Years resolutions.

It's a week into January and I got nothing so far except "Be Happy", which is not so much a New Years resolution as it is a validation statement.


I don't actually like the idea of making a New Years resolution, but I do it every year. I don't like the fact that there is this one time of year where we feel obligated to make some decision about what we want our life to be like, so we make all these crazy promises to ourselves without thinking them through.

So this year I will not be making the following New Years resolutions:
1. Spend less time on my cellphone - yeah, that's just not going to happen. I use my phone for everything from google to searching for recipes. I occasionally even use it to make phone calls.
2. I will exercise 2 - 3 times per week - erm, no. Unless watching a marathon of movies starts counting as exercise, you can pretty much guarantee this is not going to happen
3. Stop eating so much take-aways - the fact that Fridays in my home have now become known as "take-away Fridays" is pretty much an indication of how eating less junk food is not going to happen

Don't get me wrong, I would love to work on all 3 of the above things. But something about turning it into a New Years resolution seems to pretty much guarantee that it is not going to happen.

Case in point: last year I did not make a New Years resolution to find a new job. I did, however, make a mid-year resolution that if my the end of 2013 I was not happy in my job that I would find a new one. My mid-year resolution worked out better than any New Years resolution I have ever made.

Perhaps this year I won't make any New Years resolutions. I mean, it is already the 7th and shouldn't I already have decided on some goals already.

Maybe I will leave my resolutions until 1 July.  After all, the best part of resolutions seems to be putting them off until a more convenient time.