Listen to this first!
Nothing to do with it, but a great song don’t you think!
Blue Monday is the third Monday in January, by which almost everybody has abandoned their New Year Resolutions and is feeling like poop. It’s my favourite day, because it’s the first reality-check of every calendar year. So my question to you (dear reader) is: how are you going to fail (again) in 2017? If you are half-smart, the answer will be: “The same way I failed every other year, you presumptuous MOFO!” in a slightly offended, passive-aggressive sort of tone. But I forgive you, we all get touchy when we are about to fail. So let’s not. Let’s succeed instead — maybe 2017 is the year we do it differently.
The key is not setting unachievable goals in the first instance. We dream those up when we’re four gin&tonics into our NYE revels, sheets firmly to the wind, and believe (deludedly) that the world is our oyster. It is not. On a good day, the world gives four-fifths of a shit about you, green in tooth and claw in its passive resistance to your dreams. If you were a fat bastard in 2016, then guess what — you’ll still be fat in 2017, and probably still a bastard too. Dr Phil bite me: you think two decades of jumbo pretzel dogs is just going to melt away because you bought a celebrity diet book at the Xmas sales? Eliminating sugar, are you? Cutting back on carbs? Good luck, fatty. Until you walk the talk, you’re going to yoyo back to the weight you were before your NYE epiphany, minus the humongous wad of cash you handed to the smiling health & fitness charlatans. To become someone else, you have to either become someone else or get a better idea of who you really are:
Likewise the “I’ll be a better person” charade. You know the one, where you promise to mend bridges between you and all the family members and former friends you have spurned? Fuc* that. The assholes were consigned to the sin-bin of eternity for good reason. Forgiveness is overrated and unwarranted unless the MOFOs have bent over backwards to earn your forgiveness. Most people won’t, the leopard rarely changes its spots, and assholes just become more ass-holey with age. So why restrict yourself to just three weeks to make such important decisions? It took them years to earn your disapprobation, so isn’t Blue Monday more likely to be the day you realise they’re the same assholes they always were? Irrespective of your soft-hearted emotions? Forgive and forget? Screw that — just forget. It shouldn’t take you three whole weeks. Cue, song:
Or maybe your resolution is to try harder at work. Trap for new players: unless you like the taste of ass, this is more unpleasant than it looks. Easy to pump yourself up as an ‘ambitious go-getter’ after maudlin reflections of a year wasted, but much harder to persuade the boss that you’re no longer the idle time-waster you were the year before. I mean, why would they believe you? You’ll have to stoop lower. Bosses are cynical. Real change means long hours, self-discipline, sacrifice, and enough ass-licking to make a billygoat puke. Bosses love it because nobody minds an enthusiastic bottom-cleansing, but it hands all of the power to them. Better option: don’t kiss any ass, just be honest to yourself. Have some pride. In the end, who are you kidding except yourself (and in the end, not even that).
Blue Monday really only exists because three weeks is just long enough for the alcohol-fuelled fog of misguided hopefulness to evaporate. Some people take longer, of course, but hopefully the false hope will be replaced with something genuinely utilitarian, like a new appreciation of human nature. You’ll realise that us people are like the coelacanth, immutable for millions of years unless their environment FORCES us to change. So if you want to change, eliminate your options. Overweight? Sell your second car and buy a bike. It won’t stop you snarfing up pastries for lunch, fatty, but it’s 745 calories per hour healthier than driving to work. Just stop kidding yourself: does it really take three weeks to wake up from your NYE hangover? Thats 3/52nds of the year wasted. And if you don’t agree, you know what you can do: