My 5 (probably futile) New Year's Resolutions for 2024
It's been a rubbish week, but I'm trying to be optimistic
Dear Jasper (and all my lovely readers),
Merry Fucking Christmas. I’m mid-meltdown, I’m afraid, so not feeling very jolly. But I have two topics to address. First up, new year’s resolutions.
Generally, I’m the sort of person who hates this sort of thing. I hate New Year’s Eve, for one thing. I’ve never had a good one, and plenty of really very shit ones. Too much pressure. Too socially charged. The countdown is awkward as fuck. The forced hugging is intolerable.
It’s also silly, obviously, that there’s only one time of year where everyone promises to be better. Of course they won’t be better. No one sticks to them.
You can tell I’m in a foul mood, can’t you? More on the reasons behind that further down.
Anyway, bizarrely, against all the odds, I quite like new year’s resolutions. They’re about as useful as buying a lottery ticket (in that it’s almost 100% certain to be a waste of time and £2) but whenever I do enter the lottery, I feel absolutely sure in the days leading up to the draw that I’m going to win. I suppose that makes me, deep down, a very optimistic person? So I spend that time, while I’m waiting for the results, with a spring in my step. I brainstorm ways I’ll spend the money. Going to the supermarket is more fun because I can look at the expensive biscuits and the quadruple-quilted loo roll and think ‘very soon, I’ll be able to toss these into the trolley without a second thought’.
So really, £2 is a small price to pay for several days of hope. Naturally, I’m absolutely astonished and a bit disappointed every time I don’t win the lottery but the same trick works every time. So next time I really need a £2 dollop of hope to get me through a tough week, I buy another ticket. Maybe 4 or 5 a year, on average?
I need one this week.
Everything was going quite swimmingly, you see. We had found our dream house in Mauritius and were due to move in two weeks. It was much cheaper and much nicer than the one we’re currently in. It was in exactly the right location, near the only friends I have on the island. The layout was absolutely perfect for our needs. Even the plug sockets were the right shape (accepting both UK appliances and Julius’ German ones). The prospect of this house massively softened the blow of Julius’ new job and his being gone for six weeks at a time.
But then we lost it. Owner decided to sell it instead. So now we have nowhere to live as of the 15th of January, which is pretty fucking soon, and there’s nothing else on the market even remotely similar. I can’t even buy a lottery ticket because the app won’t let me from Mauritius.
So I’m all out of hope too. May as well make some resolutions for 2023. Like playing the lottery, they may be futile but they will make me feel optimistic for a few days. Self help gurus say you should never make more than one at a time, because that’s overwhelming and unrealistic. If I was the sort of person to take sensible advice, maybe I’d be a millionaire on my own merit and not a soon-to-be-homeless, lottery-playing twerp. So I’ve made five. Here they are…
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