This is a throwback to an article I wrote on the cusp of the new year 2014. For me, it is a glimpse into my somewhat younger self. It turned out to be a busy and eventful year. I managed to learn a new professional skill (albeit not pole dancing) as a content creator for a Galway based website and continued to write and edit for the Craic in Galway magazine. It was also the year I got married. My life was dominated by wedding planning. I still have the same belly overhang from Christmas indulgence; I am older, not particularly wiser, and I continue to learn what life, love, friendship, and, more recently, dog ownership is all about.
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My new year’s resolution this year is not to make any new year’s resolutions at all. Not one. I do not want to be fitter, thinner, bolder, better. Years of resolutions have left me wanting and I am stubbornly avoiding the entire subject. Case closed.
And yet, I am sitting here eating grapes in a bid to con my body that they are, in fact, chocolate. I am lamenting the sedentary lifestyle I adopted over the Christmas period and am desperately trying to suck in my belly while ignoring the tightness of the top button of my jeans. I will not step on the scales. Not until I am indeed fitter, thinner, bolder and better.
Our bodies, I have decided, are on resolutions auto pilot. The switch clicks to ‘on’, as soon as the clock strikes 12, and suddenly the world shifts. As if by magic, I am dusting down the gym gear and squeezing myself into two pairs of leggings in order to hit the weights.
Vegetables are the new steak, fish is the new chips, and pizzas are confined to the past. I am out in all sorts of horrendous grey drizzly miserable weather, pounding the Salthill prom, to shake off the cobwebs of the year past.
And I have a lot of shaking to do. Perhaps we need to shed layers and layers, in order to move on and progress, and that process starts on January 1 whether we like it or not. There is something exciting about discovering a new sense of self - a new talent, such as photography or pole dancing, whatever floats your boat as we set sail into a new year.
We start the year full of joyful intentions and seasonal goodwill. By April, it’s a case of ‘woman overboard’ as the resolve has weakened considerably. By the end of the year, it has crumbled and sank without a trace.
Maybe the time for change has passed and I am simply perfect as I am. Accepting ourselves, as we are, is one of the biggest challenges. I am the Bridget Jones of my own destiny – full of self love and self loathing in equal measure.
Part of me can’t wait to see what opportunities are out there this January. There will be lots of inspiration and intriguing new adventures on the horizon (or so said that fortune teller I went to recently).
However, I would like a nice, peaceful, uneventful, calm and settled 2014, without any drama or unplanned shenanigans. I want life to be like a pint of Guinness – familiar, comforting and wholesome with a light, bright topping and a strong, solid centre. I want to be grounded with just the right measure of fun and entertainment.
Will it happen? Will is heck. Life is, as Forrest Gump describes, like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna’ get. And so we end up back at the beginning and I am going to have the remains of that selection box for breakfast. New Year, old me, what harm?!
