First week back at work? – Did you rise at half six, raring to go, whipping up a supergreen smoothie in your brand new NutriBullet whilst performing 30 of those bum clenches you saw on ‘Lorraine’ the day after Boxing Day when you were chain-eating Quality Street for breakfast.
Maybe you’re planning on roller skating to work and heading to Tai Chi later?
Maybe tonight is the night you’ve allocated to fulfilling your longstanding quest to learn sleight-of-hand magic?
Whatever you’re planning – you’ll be doing it bloody enthusiastically, because it’s a New Year, and that means a New You!
It’s perfectly natural to feel this desire for change at this time.
Chances are you spent the last two weeks mainly in the reclining position, due partly to your first alcoholic drink arriving immediately after your first cup of tea, and partly because the central heating was so high that any excessive movement would have led to severe discomfort.
All this lying dormant makes us restless for thrills. Our sofa-atrophied muscles are clucking for a good stretching. These last few days of limbo have been spent bouncing round our houses, unconcerned about bruises because we’re puffy from dehydration and pigs in blankets. Only now that we’ve finally conceded we need water to exist and vegetables are only better for us when not smothered in animal fat, are our blood sugar levels dwindling back to normal.
This is the time of year when we think we can do a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g, so let’s embrace it!
You can try and fight it but it’s programmed into us to come up with a list of resolutions as long as our Christmas onesy. The festive period is perfect for collating all those self-niggles, and allowing you to indulge each of them to the point you feel sick, because everything can be forgiven when you emerge in the New Year as a vegan runner affiliated with four different clubs who meditates thrice daily.
We commit to becoming writers of books, screenplays, dream journals, and gratitude jars. We’re now tri-athletes, mime artists, storm chasers. Nothing is too big an ask, we can volunteer every night of the week and run 200km in a month, because it’s the New Year and we are SUPERHUMAN. I repeat…we can do ANYTHING!
Maybe it’s unrealistic. Maybe we should really just focus on one or two important changes we want to make. Or maybe, we should just go for it with gleeful gusto allowing ourselves to trust in the magical motivation of the New Year, and believe, for however short a period that we’re capable of Bikram yoga before breakfast, visiting a different European destination each month, and taking up parkour to make our commute more efficient.
Dream big, people. Ride that shiny wave of determination and possibility. Hopefully a couple will stick.
Amy
My debut book is out in March 2017 - a travel humour memoir about my time in South America, which tests out the usual kind of life advice doled out to women when they decide to do something a little different...
