Today is New Year’s Eve. Facebook is already starting to fill up with statuses waxing lyrical about how great next year is going to be and how hard and challenging this year has been. Everyone wants to put the past behind them and look to the future with head held high in an optimistic cloud of goodness.

So my weird thought is: why do we always think that the next year is going to be any better than this year and that we are going to behave any better than we have done this year?

Tomorrow is another year

Tomorrow is another year

It isn’t and we aren’t. 2016 is going to have the same amount of ups and downs and good and bad days as 2015 had. The bad times don’t end today, the good times don’t start tomorrow. In fact, chances are, things tomorrow will be pretty awful: we’ll be feeling tired, hungover, nauseated and fat. That’s not a great start to a new year. Then there is also that sick feeling that work is about to start soon and the knowledge that January is going to be a horrible, cold and boring month.

Are we really going to be nicer to people after tomorrow? Exercise more? Drink less? Eat better? Help more people across the road? Stand up on trains? Perhaps for a week or so, ten days at a stretch.

So I say that today instead of standing proud in a waft of sentimentality we should stay firmly on realistic ground and look back and accept that 2015 was a good year and a shitty one and look forward and expect 2016 to be the same. We should always strive to be nice to people, help them across the road (unless they don’t want to be helped), exercise regularly, drink and eat sensibly, and be forgiving of our adversaries. I ask you, dear reader, to do something extraordinary next year (as you may have done last year), take up something new, have a goal, seize the day. Those are all good goals to have all of the time. But equally accept that there will be times when you find yourself drawn into gossip, or letting a friend down, or not noticing the pregnant person standing on the train or wallowing in self-pity.

My new year’s resolution is: just keep doing the best I can with the resources I have to hand and keep seizing the day. Oh, and to keep blogging.