A quick graze of your facebook, twitter, tumblr, or RSS reader will yield many webcomics & meme images on the futility of New Year’s Resolutions. There is much cynicism when the term is invoked, especially on the internet where meeting a given topic, concept or proper noun with anything but acid is seen as a sign of weakness & an unenlightened mind.
If you were one of the smart ones, after all, you’d know how idiotic it would be to pin your hopes on changing yourself at the start of an imaginary cycle of the earth’s revolution around the sun, as much a crazy person to be made fun of as the people who thought the world was ending last December 21st, or someone who does not find bacon utterly captivating. And everybody knows that bad habits are hard to break, but very easy to get into. That true perseverance results from drastic, monastic rituals and rigours that true smart people can do because their Mind and Brain and Education you see, but they don’t need to because their bad habits are actually endearing don’t you know and who says they aren’t? Here’s a cute web comic about procrastination and how cats are adorable. Move along.
Anyhoo, there’s no such thing as change. You’re ruled by your genes, or society, or philosophy (but definitely not God, and possibly not BaconGod, or Aliens, unless Aliens made BaconGod), so change is just an illusion, and deep down you can never change because Free Will is an illusion too, except when smart people who have Brains and Minds and Education & Bacon decide to do something, you know, if they really want to, because they totally would succeed because the Human Mind can do Anything!
Except, that is, entertain the possibility of using an imaginary, made-up point in the revolution of the Earth as the impetus to change something in their lives they are dissatisfied with. Because trying just means you’re going to fail. Trying means you’re going to have to be embarrassed when you do fail (because there is no if). And trying, and failing, in full view of the internet, is the ultimate #FAIL, and no smart person would do that. No, don’t ever do something as foolish as try*.
*(Smart people would here invoke a famous line from Yoda about the utter #Fail of even the word ‘try’. A quote from a movie character. Created by George Lucas. You know, that guy who discombobulated their childhoods**.)
**(It’s amazing how few smart people invoke that other famous line, “Meesa follow you now okeeday,” despite the ample opportunities, given their daily behaviour.)
Trying is for people in #FAIL compilation videos. Trying is for people who make New Year’s Resolutions. Trying is for people like me, who have had the gall to not only make resolutions this year, but have also done so while having #FAIL-ed several times in the past, in full view of the internet.
…Except for the times I didn’t #FAIL. It was also in full view of the internet, but somehow smart people don’t seem to make meme comics about that part of the human experience. Maybe all those drastic, monastic rituals and rigours from which meme comics spring don’t provide the intellectual tools for it. For trying and not #FAIL-ing on something you said you’d do at an imaginary point in the Earth’s revolution around the Sun. Hey, smart people will tell you that statistically speaking, the number of people trying and not #FAIL-ing are so infinitesimal that it’s within the margin of error and can’t be counted. Look, there’s a pie chart and everything so it must be true and shut up. Smart people love pie. Especially bacon pie.
I’m not going to, at this point, dismiss Smart People as some kind of easy Other. I am smart people. I’m not even going to make some kind of facile “…but I’m real smart people” argument.
I made New Year’s Resolutions. I used an imaginary point in the revolution of the Earth around the sun to assess certain aspects of my life that I was dissatisfied with, and sought to either improve them or discard them from said life in an expedient manner. I may #FAIL at any or all of these endeavours. I will make jokey meme comics about #FAIL-ing at them because smart people like me eat that shit up. I will make jokey meme comics about imaginary #FAIL-ing at the things I do not #FAIL at too, because smart people will eat that shit up with a rusty spoon, and be none the wiser.
The specific Resolutions are irrelevant: they cover the basic areas of health, wealth and creativity. Normal stuff. Normal stuff that smart people like me should honestly be good at anyway, rather than somehow managing to be poor, uncreative and unhealthy, which statistically speaking, most smart people tend to be. There’s a pie chart and everything. The ones who try and succeed? Margin of error. Not relevant.
I’d rather be irrelevant to a pie chart than sitting around reading one. BaconGod can come try and stop me.
Just try.
V
