My New Year Un-resolutions
The “bad” habits I plan to continue
’Tis the time of year when normally reasonable people decide that some self-improvement is called for. More often than not, these New Year’s resolutions involve trying to convince others (and yourself) that you will not only start doing something you don’t actually want to do, but you will continue that unpleasurable activity for the remainder of the year to come.
I say why not skip the folderal and embrace your bad habits. People can (and will) be judgy all they want. In 2020, I’m going to do me and nobody else has to like it.
Drinking before noon
Apparently, drinking before noon is considered a bad thing, as though when the clock hits noon alcohol consumption suddenly leaps from being pathological to being socially acceptable.
Let me just say, it depends on when your day starts. I keep senior-citizen-to-the-extreme hours of going to bed before 6 pm and getting up around 2 or 3 am. If we convert this to “normal” person hours, me having a drink at 9 am when I’ve already been up for 7 hours is entirely normal.
And really, whether it’s normal or not, I don’t care. 9 am is just as valid a happy hour as any other time of day.
Not flossing
I’ve been getting nagged at to floss for decades. For a while there, I even got over my annoyance at getting told what to do and actually flossed.
However, that only lasted for so long, and mentally illness can switch up the relative importance of things. When the whole idea of living seems very low on the priority list, flossing gets punted off that priority list and into the junk heap.
If I decided to care about oral hygiene, I would start brushing my teeth on a regular basis. Until that happens, flossing can bite me. Luckily, the people at my dentist’s office are sufficiently aware of my craziness that they’re a bit scared of me, so there is a perfunctory half-hearted nag and that’s the end of it. There are benefits to being crazy, after all.
Embracing germiness
I have pet guinea pigs who rock my world. Guinea pigs practice coprophagia, also known as eating their own poop. Being a loving mom, I shower them with kisses. Basically, I’m kissing their bums. I’m 100% okay with that, and if there’s some tongue involved, even better.
Not eating any differently
I take meds to keep my crazy in check. Those meds make me fat. I’ll take fat over full-blown crazy any day of the week. Sure, I could lose weight if I wanted to be really careful about what I eat, but that would require a) caring, and b) being willing to prioritize theoretical weight loss over eating food that I like.
Plus I don’t like vegetables. My mother is convinced she did something very wrong with me when I was a small child, which is possibly true, but doesn’t change the fact that most of the veggies in the household are being sent in the guinea pigs’ direction.
Not going anywhere near a gym
I do not like going to the gym. I never did. I never will, and never will pretend. I’m okay with that. And if anyone else isn’t, I don’t particularly care.
Being asocial
I don’t like people. There are a few rare exceptions, but not many. The further away that people are from me, the better.
For some reason, being a hermit has a bad rap. I think 2020 is the year to bring hermitude back in style.
After all, consider what’s happening in politics. Has a certain pumpkin-hued world leader got you wondering why the world is going to hell in a handbasket? Hermitude is the answer to block all that mess out.
Picking of various types
Picking at various body bits and orifices is considered impolite. Fine, so don’t do it in public, but at home, I’m a firm believer that there should be no such restrictions. Skin, scabs, nose… it’s all fair game. It’s my home and I can be gross if I want to.
When the clock strikes midnight several hours from now, I will be sound asleep. I will wake up tomorrow and it will be a new year, without having to buy into the resolution insanity. Now that’s something I’ll be happy to drink to at 9:00 in the morning.
