From The Brink Of Boredom. . .

Comes another rant.

So it turns out that another number has ticked over in the planetary odometer and this means only one thing. People are making fleeting new year's resolutions in plans to improve their lives for no particular reason other than the fact that the year is no longer the same as it was.

Nothing else has actually changed for them, but still, people will decide to lose 30 pounds, take their religion more seriously, read more books, work out more often, stop eating babies, stop smoking and all other sorts of crazy things that they'll only really work on for a week or two before forgetting they even planned to do it in the first place.

The way I see it is, planning on self-improvement is incredibly hard to make stick at the best of times, you need a good solid reason to do it because people are instinctively lazy. I know I am. I wouldn't work to lose weight unless I knew I was about to get a heart attack, but then again, if I worked to lose weight right now I'd be diagnosed with some sort of eating disorder. There have been plenty of times where I've decided, for no good reason, to learn a new skill. The random books about learning Mandarin, including CDs and flash cards, are testament to that failed endeavour. It didn't work because I had no motivation to actually learn and that's why most new year's resolutions will also fail.

Probably a big factor in the failure rate is that people simply forget the resolutions a little while after they've made them. Which also helps explain why people persist in making new resolutions every 365.25 days, they forgot had badly it failed last time. So if only people kept a record of their resolutions, then they would stop making them after realising that for the last umpteen years they've tried to kick some habit or make some minor improvement to themselves and completely failed to do so.

Howells, I guess I'll just be resolute in my decision to only take on tasks of self-improvement based on needs and boredom, not the old galactic odometer. Sure the ones made from boredom are never successful, but they help kill the time.