New years resolutions can kiss my arse!
There I said it! And I mean every flippin’ word.
For as long as I can remember there has been an expectation that each new year we must strive to be better than we were the year before. My first experience of New Year resolutions came to me as a kid. I can't have been much older than 10 years old. My aunt and cousins had stayed with us for Christmas (one of the best I remember as a kid) and we had a pretty awesome new year planned. My aunt asked us each to make a resolution for the new year.
Now, being only 10 I had no idea what she was on about. She told me that I needed to decide what I was going to do to make myself better next year. She was going to go on some swanky new course for makeup (or summat) and my mom was going back on the cambridge diet for what felt like the hundredth time. Now me being the sassy, back chatting being that I was responded with “but I’m pretty great this year”. Cue the usual response about me being vain, how I should always strive to be better and how I should know my place and stop back chatting with adults…blah blah blah eye roll!
I don't remember what I wrote that year but I do remember being left with a feeling that this was something I had to do. That no matter how great I thought I had been that year it was never good enough and I needed to be better. I needed to strive for better. I honestly think that this is the moment that birthed Regina the overachiever. And thus New Year's resolutions became a thing I absolutely had to do.
Flash forward 30 or so years ,and I now have a worrying collection of failed diets, fads, courses I didn't need to take, self doubt and bullshit I needn't have signed up for.
My previous failures include:
Lose half my body weight
Learn a language
Read a book a week
Meditate every day
Stop swearing (pahahahahaaaaaa)
No dairy (WTF)
Run 5 days a week
Exercise 7days a week
Wear make up every day
Stop dressing like a boy (Like WTAF)
Talk less (this one was jokes).
The idea of setting a target /goal/task at the start of the year and expecting to completely stick to it for 365 is pants. And even worse when the motivation behind it is because of some misled idea that you weren't good enough last year. This list of things you must do will make you better, more whole, more accepted. All of these things I listed were because I didn't feel like I was enough just the way I was. None of those resolutions came from a place of love. I was focussing on the parts of myself I felt were lacking.
I haven't set a new year's resolution for the best part of five years now and boy am I happier for it!
I'm still chubby (and bloody cute).
I still only speak english, and quite eloquently might I add.
I have never read 52 books a year (I listened to over 60 last year though).
I meditate on a regular, but I’m not counting. I do it when my spirit (or my guides) tells me to.
I still take a huge bite out of a block of cheese and put it back in the fridge (much to my husband's dismay).
I exercise when I feel like it.
I wear makeup when I feel like it.
I wear what makes me feel great (loves me some Air Max ‘95s).
I swear like a trooper and if talking were an olympic sport I would be legendary!!!!!!
These are just some of the reasons why I am a fucking Queeeeeeeen!
I intend to be the same awesome version of me in 2023. I’ll learn the things I think I need to know, eat the foods my body wants, read the books that interest me and set small achievable goals as the year progresses.
The only thing I will resolve to do in the next year is to continue accepting, loving and being me! This is what has gotten me to where I am today.
I challenge you to do the same.
