Resolved: To make easy promises I can keep
Writer and actor Michael Ian Black with some thoughts about New Year's resolutions:
Now that the New Year is upon us, some of you might be feeling bad about already breaking the resolutions you made to yourselves only a couple of days ago.
Well, not me! Because this year, instead of getting down on myself for making promises to myself I can't keep, I'm taking a new tack. My resolutions for 2016 are all things that I'm already doing and will continue to do.
For example, this year, I will continue to have pizza for dinner every Friday night. It's delicious, inexpensive, and the kids never go, "Pizza, again?"
Instead they go, "Pizza again!?!"
Plus, science has proven that pizza calories don't count, because anything that tastes that good cannot make you fat.
Also, I resolve to continue not jogging. Jogging is bad for the knees and other body parts as well. In fact, according to the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, nearly 70 percent of all runners can expect to become injured. Seventy percent! Those are Ebola numbers!
Running is to the body what demolition derby is to the automobile. So I'm going to continue not doing that.
In 2016, I resolve to spend a little too much on presents for my wife and not enough on retirement. Every year my wife and I tell each other we're not going to get each other anything for Christmas, and every year I end up buying her a bunch of stuff that she doesn't need but that makes her happy. Same with her birthday.
And when they shut off our heat after we've retired because we can't afford to keep it on, at least we'll have plenty of fancy sweaters to wrap ourselves in.
This year, I resolve to continue complaining about the New York Yankees. Everybody likes to complain about the Yankees -- people who hate them, and people like me who love them. Complaining about sports teams, that's one of the things that binds us together as Americans.
The Yankees are the only team I follow, and I find complaining about the failures of other people keeps me from looking too closely at my own. Psychologists call this "avoidance," and it's a terrific way to feel better about yourself without having to do any, you know, "work."
So yeah, improving yourself with resolutions is fine and everything, but knowing you are a flawed human being who eats a little too much pizza, doesn't exercise or save enough, but goes through the New Year with a smile on your face, that's even better.
For more info:
- michaelianblack.typepad.com
- Follow @michaelianblack on Twitter
- "Navel Gazing: True Tales of Bodies, Mostly Mine (but also my mom's, which I know sounds weird)" by Michael Ian Black (Simon & Schuster); Also available in eBook and Unabridged Digital Audio Download formats