Realistic Resolutions

By Gordon Hopkins “If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat - in other words, turn you into an adult.” - P. J. O'Rourke This is my first column for 2025. I will have to make it quick because I am still recovering from my New Year's Eve celebration, which involved sitting on the sofa with three cats battling for room on my lap, my head lolled back and my mouth open, drooling onto the back of my sofa because I fell asleep at about 9:30 p.m. watching TV.That's how a grown up spends New Year's Eve.Grown ups also use the dawn of the new year to make what are known as New Year's resolutions, sometimes referred to as those things you should have been doing a long time ago.According to my research*, it was the ancient Babylonians that started the whole New Year's resolutions thing, about 4,000 years ago. It should be noted that they didn't make their resolutions in January, when the new year actually starts, but in March, showing that “stop procrastinating” was not among their resolutions.According to History.com (which seems as good a place as any to find out the history of New Year's resolutions), these resolutions were for a 12-day religious celebration called Akitu, in which loyalty to the king (or to crown a new king) was reaffirmed for another year and also an opportunity for those Babylonians to make promises to pay their debts.And the tradition carried on from there, in one form or another, until we reached the point where we are now in modern society, making a bunch of resolutions that we know we won't or can't keep no matter how hard we try, which isn't very hard at all.With this in mind, I have decided to break this cycle of making and breaking resolutions. This year, 2025, shall be the year of the realistic resolution. So here are my resolutions for the new year: Gain weight.Waste time.Waste money.Lose my temper more often. This one may prove to be difficult, given how angry I am all the time anyway.Spend more time avoiding people.Start smoking. My father smoked a pack of Pall Malls or more every day and he was by far the coolest guy I knew, so I figure taking up smoking can only lead to good things. Having said that, I've never smoked myself, so I am open to any advice from the experienced smokers out there. What brand should I smoke? Should I smoke menthols? What about a cigarette holder, like Hunter S. Thompson? Or should I eschew cigarettes altogether and just smoke a pipe?Don't learn another language.Put off dealing with my procrastination problem.Give up. Well, that's all I got for now. I'm cautiously optimistic that I can do most of these. I hope you have a happy new year. I certainly plan to. *By “research,” of course I mean trolling the internet for something, anything to write about because, once again, I put off writing this column until the last minute.

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