… New Year’s Resolutions

Let’s face it. Nobody really likes New Year’s Eve.

Well some people might: let’s say from mid-teens to mid-twenties. A period of my life not much longer than (and disappointingly overlapping with) that for which I had acne.

And just like pustular acne, New Year’s Eve spent the better part of a decade popping up predictably throughout my teenage years, causing acute embarrassment, crippling self consciousness and throwing the absence of a snog into sharp relief.

But I’ll share a suspicion with you, folks.

I don’t think losing the 18-24 demographic is going to massively hit the readership of a blog by a fortysomething GP, so let’s carry on without them.

The thing is, while I don’t like New Year, I love a New Year’s Resolution. DrBrownIsGettingBetter.com is about nothing if not personal development.

If the creaking shelf of self help books in my study shows us anything (other than that I should perhaps read them rather than just buy them) it’s that there is an appetite for self-improvement. And that, after years of offering subtle behaviour management techniques and finely crafted lifestyle advice as a GP, I reckon I can help.

#1:  Dry January

Time 00:00:02

Happy New Year!

Cheers!

Clink!

Sip!

Bollocks!

Resolution Points  0/_*****

#2:  Do more exercise

“Define “more”?” asks my new personal trainer.

“Well, I’ve been watching a lot of World’s Strongest Man…”

“Define “more” without being a prick?”

“Errmmm…  More than I did last year?”

Well, folks.  After doing both the press ups required to beat last year’s tally, we can mark this one as achieved.

It feels a bit of a shallow victory though.  Leaves an empty feeling in the stomach. 

Perhaps an empty feeling that could be filled with a few squares of Dairy Milk?

But no. 

Curse you, Resolution #3!

Resolution points 2/_*****

#3:  Healthy eating

Now, this one is doomed right from the outset. 

On the one hand, New Year is a great time to start afresh with a healthy eating program. 

On the other, slightly chubbier hand, my New Year’s Eve takeaway last night was so enormous it set off the seatbelt alarm on the passenger seat of the car on the way home, and I have a fridge full of leftovers. 

If five-a-day was of sweet and sour chicken balls I’d be your man.

More than this, I’ve only just managed to resist polishing off an A4 sized bar of Dairy Milk single-handed, and still have half an eye on the remainder of Child A’s selection box. And the Fruit and Nut bar the size of an Ikea Cadburu^TM dining table which proves Mrs. Dr Brown’s continued inclusion on the good list.

I also can’t let it go to waste or that would violate resolution #4.

Resolution points 1/_*****

#4:  Save the planet.

I own a litter picker and have fancied Michaela Strachan off Springwatch for the better part of thirty years, so I’m already practically the missing link between Sir David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg. The problem with starting with such a high bar is that it takes some pretty high-end eco-crusading to demonstrate progress.

For that reason, I’ve spent much of the afternoon standing in my garden burning plastic bags, polystyrene packaging and inexplicably empty selection box inserts, so they don’t end up as landfill or in the oceans smothering inquisitive bottlenose dolphins.

Resolution points 4/_*****

#5:  Make loads more resolutions.

Of course, we all have room for self-improvement, and the world can always be made a better place.

So resolutions are obviously a good thing.

Right?

But they’re also really hard.

Especially if you start from a good place.

And for that reason, I’ve decided to lower the bar.  In 2022 I herby resolve to take up smoking, badger bating and posting hamburgers to Sir Paul McCartney. 

Not because I want to.  

But to give me some nice easy options to give up in 2023.

Resolution points 5/_*****