How NOT to keep your resolutions for 2014

There’s really no point in actually sticking to your resolutions. Failing at the goals you decide to annually set for yourself is like rooting for a sport team in that most of the derived pleasure is due to failure and the ensuing belief of being somehow victimized or put-upon. That’s why we’ve decided to bring you a guide for how to not keep your resolutions for 2014. Because we care.

1) Set unrealistic goals
There’s no justifiable reason to make easy-to-achieve resolutions. (Okay, perhaps it’s fine if you are an admittedly weak person who revels in minimal accomplishments because, hey, any outcome that can possibly be construed as an “achievement” totally fills that gap in your soul from when your mother didn’t love you enough. But I’m assuming you’re better than that.) You remember that piece of yearbook wisdom: Shoot for the moon, because even if you miss at least you shot at something, and that’s an accomplishment the police state can’t rob you of (yet). Any loser can make a basic New Year’s resolutions. I want to eat more vegetables and read seven novels! Wow, you have one sacred day to reorient your entire life and those are the goals you hope to achieve? Way to dream big. Granted, those constitute worthwhile resolutions if you are illiterate or allergic to most vegetables, but the fact you’re reading this article eliminates at least one of those two possibilities, and, really, it’s not all that hard to eat more vegetables when so many people who are in comas just don’t put up any semblance of a fight when you start feasting on their legs.

2) If not unrealistic, set vague goals
Vagueness is great; specificity and conciseness are overrated. Trust me, as someone who bases his life on padding sentences and paragraphs with enough fluff so as to avoid any real risk of critical engagement with what I write — because you can’t criticize something not even worthy of criticism, right? — I can totally and confidently say out loud with all honesty in my voice that being direct as a person is something that is actually very undesirable when compared to other things that are different and contrasting.

3) Don’t take it one day at a time
You know who takes things one day at a time? Drunks. You know who you can’t ever trust for good or practical advice? People with life experiences that are radically different from your own, thus situating them within an entirely different world-view and thereby hindering their ability to connect with your life. But also drunks.

4) Don’t keep a calendar, diary, or chart
Unnecessary unless your resolution is to be more anal retentive.

5) Never reread the resolutions you made for yourself
Good artists never look back on their past work. And, if you think about it, we are all kind of the artists of the masterpieces that are our own individual lives. (Personally, I’m similar to Vincent van Gogh, because I too cut off one of my ears in order to upstage amateur magicians at birthday parties by pulling my own ear from out behind a child’s ear.) The whole point of it being a new year is that you are able to start fresh, so isn’t it kinda counterproductive to be constantly looking back on things you wrote, technically, on the final day of last year?