So many people set unattainable goals for New Years. I often hear ‘I’m going to lose x-amount of weight and go to the gym every day’ or ‘I will obtain my dream job and become rich and famous’. Most people tend to pigeon-hole ourselves into unattainable goals carefully concealed as ‘New Year’s Resolutions’. Instead, why not abandon ship on the resolution boat to hell and commit to loving yourself just as you are?
The constant need for change and validation is a long-time tradition that goes back to the days of early capitalism. We can thank our early 1950’s grandparents for our deeply rooted love of the newest and shiniest next-best-thing. Whether it was buying a new car or working towards getting the bigger house, we were taught as western children to always strive for great material happiness. With the social media craze that has erupted and overtaken our lives, society has fortunately strayed from the material obsession with houses and cars, but a darker horse has emerged. In the present day, the newest cool shiny thing is the commodity of a person’s identity and how they present themselves on a daily basis in our tech-dependant world.
On Facebook and Instagram, do you have enough photos with friends in them? Where are your yummy food photos that must be taken at hip restaurants (make sure to use a rateable app on your smartphone)? Do not forget your cute puppy photos, preferably with a pug sitting on your sexy boyfriend’s six pack.
Back to New Year’s resolutions. Due to the fact that we are literally commodifying our identities on a variety of intensely open social media outlets, New Year’s resolutions are no longer only a cute suggestion. Instead, they have become necessary in order to publically demonstrate that you are always striving to be better (with the hope of getting more ‘likes’ of course). So with that knowledge in mind, I say screw it! Abandon that four point agenda on how you will find your dream job, husband, dog, and white picket fence in the span of 12 months (when you really know four of those months will be spend crying (in private of course) over having failed to find any of the above). It is time to abandon your self-hating commitment to loss a ton of weight and dedicate yourself solely to exercising at the expense of all other pleasures.
On New Year’s Day, in an effort to be a rebel and abandon all New Year’s resolutions I vow to wake up (hungover no doubt) and look myself in the mirror to say, ‘hey, I love you girl’. Once we set aside our false expectations and fake online identities, it becomes apparent that we are all works in progress. I kind of suck sometimes. I fail to get to the gym on my lazy days, I have been caught eating more than one cookie after midnight and clothes do end up on my bedroom floor. But at the end of the day, I remember to commend myself for getting up and brushing my teeth earlier that day. I am growing and so are you. Love all the idiotic moments we will inextricably find ourselves in along the way.
New Year’s resolutions or not, I will continue to be somewhere between my very best and worst, living my life to the fullest and with my camera phone tucked away.
