New year, a new blog: Where to start

By Dan Morris

Happy New Year Picture: http://www.psdgraphics.com/

After celebrating the new year with family and friends and reminiscing the year gone-by the only real fact of the matter is that in all fairness nothing’s really changed from 2010, so what’s the big deal?

Well I guess for many it’s the chance to start a fresh, perhaps turn over a new leaf and begin the new year in the way you’ve always wanted. Perhaps you even made a few new year's resolutions.

For me new year is the biggest anti-climax in the history of anti-climaxes. Whether it’s the mix of pointless resolutions or the over-priced, hassle ridden partying that I find annoying, I’m not too sure, perhaps it’s both.

But for the purpose of this, let’s talk new year's resolutions, to put it bluntly I find these little ‘resolutions’ pointless. Now, I know most of you out there set up these changes, with your best intentions in mind, however we all know that only 10% of resolutions make it past January and, as with mostly everything else in society it is followed by the cliché a few weeks or months later, of how that little ‘resolution’ became dissolution.

A recent article in the Guardian brought to my attention a study that even found that those who fail to live up to their goals become dispirited in the process and more despondent than before.

It's part of the new year ritual – an annual attempt to start afresh and turn over a new leaf. But making resolutions is a near pointless exercise, psychologists say. We break them, become dispirited in the process and finally more despondent than we were before.

I am not going to discredit those of you that actually keep the resolutions and make your new year a thoroughly good one with it. Yet, I am just slightly cynical to how many of you actually keep them.

I suppose the most annoying thing about new year's resolution, is the ritual part. I suspect most people make them because they feel they have too, with no real commitment or dedication to actually make them happen. After all should it really take the turn of the new year for one to decide it’s time for a change?

This may be a bit of a mental crutch that we all rely on more often than not, but then again I do not think we should wait for a whole year to go by before making resolutions. Action requires the present and in order to do a new action you need to do it now, not later, now. And I think in that sense we should keep that logic in mind.

In all fairness, you probably couldn’t pick a worse time to make a ‘change’ either. Say, for example, that you’ve promised to lose that bit of turkey weight picked up over Christmas. There’s nothing quite like awaking to an icy, grey, freezing cold morning to make you want to put your shorts on and run a mile.

In a nutshell, just don’t bother, not only will you inevitably break them but making resolutions is a near pointless exercise.

However, this said I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very happy new year and best of luck with your new year's resolutions (well, those of you with them still intact that is)