Tis the season for making promises to ourselves - and, possibly, others, though they'll have heard it all before - that we know we won't keep.
My New Year's resolutions are going pretty well so far. I've resolved to do the following:
Deal with things as soon as they arise instead of putting them on my deal-with-at-some-point pile. The first to-do that I must do is bury my pet rat, Georgia, in the garden. I had to have her put to sleep yesterday at the grand old age of 2 years and 9 months which translates into something like 87 in human years. She can't really go on my some-point pile because she'll start decomposing soon.
Get rid of all the clothes for a narrower person in my wardrobe. I could keep them and pretend I'm going to get back in them at some point, but I think I'm too far down the "loving my body" and "being proud to occupy more space than I did when I didn't take up quite as much" road to turn back now. That and dieting makes me want to eat just to feel a bit naughty, and last time I went to the gym, I fell off the treadmill trying to answer my phone, hit my head, closed my eyes to pretend I'd passed out to hide the embarrassment, and opened them to find every gym employee looking down at me. I thought I'd try something lower-impact and dislocated my shoulder doing aqua aerobics.
Unsubscribe from the crap I get in my inbox every day and find a way to block the invitations to Jewish singles near me, mature Christian mingles, web chat with lonely hot gal Janine, law degrees from Arizona university, berries to melt away fat, genuine Canadian cialis, and credit cards with a 97% APR but no approval procedure.
Stop scratching my face when I'm trying to work something out. I will, instead, buy a stress ball, squeeze it and throw it against the wall, thereby both getting an upper body workout and channeling my irritation without risking disfigurement.
Go outside more. Much as watching 30 Rock episodes with my SAD lamp on is good for my well-being, it's not the same as actual sunlight, even if I do prefer it and can do it in my pyjamas.
Use all the pans on my kitchen shelves to cook with instead of as plant pots, even the enormous ones my mum told me to get in ikea for when I was cooking for more than one person. It won't last till dinnertime, but we all have to come up with one unachievable resolution.
Make more (or any) effort to meet men. I'd quite like a boyfriend and, hopefully, it'll stop my mum going on at me about not making any effort. I'm already saying I'm signed up on various online dating sites, but apparently that's not enough. Seems she wants to see evidence of me looking for a man and my piss-takes of some of the ones I've seen online don't count. Dating's a different animal to the one it was last time I actually went on a date, not far off half my life ago. (There have been chaps between then and now - a woman has needs - but nothing I'd describe as a date, exactly.) There's an emphasis on the dangers of dating - of men, in general, actually - that I don't remember being so prevalent way back when. Date rape, rohypnol, feature articles on how to date safely and horror stories from women who didn't heed the warnings or did but were still assaulted, and instructions for safety on dating sites. These are the comedown from the Sex and the City buzz women were told was dating. Not that the dangers haven't always been there. I think they just got less coverage so were lower-profile. Now we're all fluent in the language of dating dangers which, though necessary, treads very close to the line between being realistic and being taught to be afraid.
Perhaps I should add another resolution: to stop analysing everything until it makes less sense than it did to begin with. Bigjock69u just winked at me on Zoosk. Maybe he could help simplify the world for me. That said, his profile says he likes hunting and wants to meet "that speshil sum 1". I'm a vegetarian editor who loves animals so maybe not. Onwards!