I LOVE New Year’s Resolutions, And Here’s Why

Where New Year’s Resolutions were once a welcome annual tradition, they are now met with the kind of yearly disparaging scorn that only the *cool kids* of the internet can muster. In the place of excited conversations exchanged over dining tables with glasses of cheap red wine, we now find grainy Robert Downey Jnr. memes being shared on Facebook, mocking the #NewYearNewMe trope that many people are seemingly too Regina George to get involved with. Are we all too cool for NYRs now? Well, I’m not buying it, and I’m here to make the case for why I love them so much.

The top five New Year’s Resolutions are unsurprisingly predictable. 1. Lose weight (preach), 2. Get fitter (preach), 3. Eat more healthily (preach), 4. Take more care of my appearance (I mean I could but I feel like I’ve gone far enough) and 5. See more of friends and family (I think three resolutions is enough). My approach to New Year’s Resolutions is slightly more unconventional. Rather than going down the route of improving my career structure or family life or even my personal goals and talents, I seek to do one thing, and to do it well – to be more irresponsible.

The thing is, I don’t need reminders to work hard on my blog or to take more chances with content or branch out at events – I’m working towards that already. And I don’t need reminders to find a flat to rent, or to save up to buy a new designer treat, or to stay on top of my invoices – when it comes to carving out a life plan, I’m always pretty on track. What I’m not great at is remembering to have fun. And gaaaaaaaad, how boring is that?! At the end of last year, I found myself worrying that in ten year’s time I would look back and wonder where my 20’s had gone. Where were all of my irresponsible weekend benders? My regretful one night stands? My bad decisions?

And so for the first time, the motivations behind my NYRs changed. Instead of pledging to cut down on drinking, I pledged to drink more. Instead of trying to save every penny I earned, I pledged to go to as many gigs and European city breaks as possible. Finding myself single towards the end of last year, I also pledged to live a wild single life and engage in a thousand gross and embarrassing night-out snogs. But then Keiran, so (and he’s definitely better). I wasn’t chasing improvement, I was chasing de-provement (not a word but it really goes with the flow of the sentence).

NYRs for me are fun. I’m excited to make them because, throughout the year, they motivate me to get up, go out and have reckless fun, instead of staying in because I’ve had a long day or I’d really like an early night. They are invitations to let loose that I routinely stamp with my own address and RSVP to with glee. So what will my NYRs be this year? One is to go to more festivals – I have Lovebox (FRANK OCEAN!) and EDC lined up – and to revel in drunken abandon once I’m there. Another is to eat out more with anybody that will come with me (the benefits are twofold – more friend time, and more food time). The final one is to just get pissed. I love a good drink but my big night’s out are few and far between, often put off because I need to shoot the day after or I’m tired or bla bla bla. But this year, I’m going to move work around my social plans instead of the other way around.

YES! What a ludicrous plan to make, right? How irresponsible? And that’s why I enjoy NYRs so much. And that’s why you should enjoy them too! Take a leaf out of my book and refigure the way you decide what you want to do. Whether you’re all for making them or dead set against what you see as a cliché tradition, you may find yourself loving New Year’s Resolutions just as much as me.