New Year 2014 Resolutions

New Year ... New You, every year its the same trite lists of excuses and promises. Lists of New Year Resolutions composed by insecure people who believe they are in need of a lifestyle change. Worse yet everyone believes they have to right to quiz you on your intentions, for no other reason than to decry your efforts when you fail. I resort to laughter when people ask my intentions for the coming year, and happily inform them that I intend to continue into the next year in the same way I've enjoyed this year.
Nothing will get between me and a mammoth bar of chocolate, I will drink when the notion takes me, and exercise is much more fun when taken as a NERF battle or water fight.

Failure is as important to New Year resolutions as the lofty idealistic statements themselves, how many broken promises litter January and February. Exercise, eating and drinking appear to top the list, but honestly, if you were truly serious you simply wouldn't need a dramatic start date. New Years is as commercial as Christmas, it's a time for off licences and brewery's to rub their hands in glee. A time for gym's to hike their prices and enjoy a surge in memberships. A time for all those shops that delight in selling rabbit food to humans to actually have people visit the shop.

It is truthfully a mugs game. Do you know that most people are to embarrassed to cancel a membership, and those that do often won't do it for months after their last tortuous visit. People complain about the financial crisis, but are willing to waste money on riding a bike inside, joining a slimming club or walking on the spot?

Stopping, starting, general change for the perceived better. Why? Was last year so awful that you need to raise a glass, to be allowed to change into an amazing person? Are you so single minded that the idea of peace, honesty and love don't rate high enough to be considered 'Life Changes'? Perhaps a outdated concept, but surely looking at our fellow man with respect and consideration would be a better start to a new beginning that deprivation of enjoyable past-times.

Now don't misunderstand (or do, if you are so inclined; I can't really dictate from the internet!), when the countries around the world raise glasses to the chimes, I will be with them. When the world unites to be honorary Scottish and clasp hands to carouse Auld Lang Syne, my dulcet tones will be heard. I believe in the joy and hope that New Year brings, the chance to remember the past and look to the future.

However I will not be pigeon holed into the irrelevance of a meaningless mission statement. Like religion and Horoscopes, if you choose to believe all well and good for you, but don't insist that everyone you meet will follow the same beliefs.