All the New Year’s resolutions you’ll fail this year

As 2016 draws to a close, you might take a moment to reflect on the year gone by – all your failings and successes; what you’d do differently; how you’ll change accordingly for the coming year. And then, of course, drink so much you forget your own name, never mind the mental list of resolutions you told yourself you’d ‘really do’ this year.

‘I’m going to start exercising.’

You told yourself this as you cracked open the Quality Street and practically inhaled its contents, slumped like a beached whale across the sofa on Boxing Day. It’s not that you’re lazy, it’s just that Edge membership is what, £30? And forking out for that contradicts another one of these ‘resolutions’.

‘I’m going to go to all my lectures and seminars.’

You will start with good intentions and set an alarm for 8. Come 8, you’ll snooze it. Repeat for half an hour. Come 8:30, you’ll convince yourself it’s too late to go now and it’ll be on lecture capture anyway and your friends can send you their notes and you need sleep to concentrate for that 2pm seminar. Come 2pm, you’re still comatose. You tried.

‘I’m going to save money.’

You’ll remember this one halfway through February as you sit alone in your room in a brand spanking new outfit, pennies away from your overdraft, eating a Dominoes order large enough to feed an entire family, having just got back from the third night out in a row. Why are you like this?

‘I’m going to stop drinking/smoking.’

This isn’t going to happen. It just isn’t. Don’t get your liver or lungs’ hopes up.

‘I’m going to eat healthier.’

As you stumble through Leeds at 4am, stomach empty and eyes fuzzy, are you really going to be thinking this? Or are you going to be thinking of the beautiful feeling of holding a warm polystyrene box of chips from Crispys in your hands?

‘I’m going to get organised.’

You tell yourself you’ll stop looking at memes for 25 hours of the day and actually do some work, and still you’ll end up -5 minutes away from the deadline, hands shaking with caffeine, eyes burning from the laptop glare as you begin to wonder if ‘uncanny’ is a real word. ‘I work best under pressure!’ you tell yourself as you fall asleep on the keyboard.

‘I’m going to stop texting that fuckboy.’

1:32am, January 3^rd 2017.  ‘You up?’. Of course, you reply a healthy seven minutes later with a non-committal ‘yeah haha wuu2 x’ because you have no self-restraint and hate yourself.