Making big changes is nearly impossible (and if it does happen, it probably won't be in January)
We are who we pretend to be, and there’s no better pretend than New Year’s resolutions. Every year, sane, smart people declare that they’ll change a bunch of shit about themselves and their lives, very often the same bunch of shit as the year before, and expect that the promises and the act of making them means something different this time, every time.
It won’t. It can’t. I’m sorry, muffin, but it isn’t going to happen like that.
The thing is, most people only seem to have one or two real problems. Yeah, your condo is too messy or you don’t call your mom enough, but those aren’t your real problems.
You’re lazy. That is your real problem. Wanting and resolving vaguely to “lose 10 pounds” or “drink less” is probably not about food or booze but, in the end, addiction or depression or low self-esteem. (Actually, everyone’s problem seems to be low self-esteem.) Choosing a few probs to solve as part of a “new year, new me!” schema, especially choosing the same probs year after year after year, just gives a pass to realer, bigger issues.
What if we were just honest about the ways we act out? Like, “I gained six pounds over Christmas during a perfect storm of tense, emotional eating, available junk food and opting to watch every episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians rather than swimming laps at the Y.” Christmas didn’t necessitate weight gain; my bad decisions rooted in laziness, immaturity and low self-esteem did. Similarly, I’ll lose it in January not because I’m “resolved” to, but because eating as much and moving as little as I did in late December would be absurd and could only actually happen if I broke both of my legs.
Immediately after the fever pitch of Christmas indulgence, every conversation and newspaper story (including the one thing I wrote between then and now) is based in either retrospective or resolution. Still, the crucial connection between what’s come before and what happens next is totally lost in the pandemonium of remember-when and next-times. Other than non-deluded resolutions, like learning to sew or play the guitar or to compost more, the resolutions that I’ve heard about, like “focus on my health” and “stop spending too much money” are impossibilities on their own, at least without some kind of framework other than lingering, post-holiday regret, a few bottles of champagne and the temporary relief that a resolution provides. Does nobody else read these statistics about fading resolve, about how few people return to the gym after March? No?
Change can happen in brief, sweeping moments: my life changed in a nearly empty Horseshoe Tavern, when I stood, stoned, in front of a band in their forties playing the best music I’d ever heard and then knew that I wasn’t going to write the LSAT the next week, that I was going to be a writer instead. I haven’t had a revelation of equal, daggy dramatics before or since, but that one big change necessitated one million other daily and nightly ones, and eventually I got what I wanted.
Most change is like this: an articulation of a quiet desire, or when the motivation to do things slightly differently becomes greater than the motivation not to. Those slow, stilted, painful moments that create change require multiple tiny failures, and real talk about what the fuck is the matter with you (probably low self-esteem). Truly changing a life is so much harder than deciding. It’s doing.
The newness of the “new year” can transcend its own bogusness: the date itself is just the kind of random signal that the collective consciousness loses its shit for, but getting any bit of perspective on a year (or, as the case may be, a decade) lived can’t be a bad idea. Even though my own murmured resolutions are useless — no different than the lethargic, latent intentions that follow me around every day of my life — the new year worked its recreationary magick on me just the same. The profundity of midnight was bigger than my own New Year’s cynicism. It’s possible that I emo-drunk-texted the nice guy I spent my millenium with, so overcome that we are still friends.
The day after, I scream-laughed at brunch with a pair of girls and then, with an ex-roommate, slid undetected into the front vestibule of an old apartment. While he smoked a joint hands-free and sorted through the mail, I touched the graffiti on the tight, crumbling walls and remembered how urbane and cool the apartment once seemed. That night, I cleaned out my closet and booked a plane ticket for a trip that I’m nervous about. Not change, really, not a resolution, but inspiration.
What are your resolutions, for today or whenever? Email kcarraway@eyeweekly.com or tweet @katecarraway. Follow EYE WEEKLY on Twitter.