Litany of woo-hoos

The downside of a column, says Sophie White, is the unavoidable record of failed New Year’s resolutions — however, this year, she got a pleasant surprise

The remit given by the editor for this issue was ‘upbeat’ which goes directly against my own personal life remit, but for the sake of my continued employment, I’ll give it a shot.

It has become something of a January tradition for me to look back on previous New Year’s columns and assess how well I did on my resolutions.

I skipped 2013 and 2014 this time because the potential discovery that I am still failing at resolutions that are four and five years old was just too depressing, and not in keeping with the ‘upbeat’ theme.

In 2015, I set the bar notably vague with a vow to stop wrecking the weddings of other people with drunken dancefloor antics. One would think this would be especially achievable, as I was in possession of a tiny baby that year. For at least one of the weddings soon after the birth, I was unable to sit down properly, never mind dance, but instead I just extended the antics to drunken speech-giving. So far, not so good.

In 2016, I outlined a frankly intimidating list of intentions, everything from: ‘make more effort in the grooming department; go to bed early; sort out the shed; quit Facebook; find out about Snapchat; start batch-cooking on Sundays’ to ‘get matching pyjamas and actually wear said matching items at the same time’.

One would think a huge list like that would

“A rat had moved into the shed, so sorting the shed out was not exactly optional”

be too much to attempt, but the unexpected upside of a giant list is that, whether by design or by accident, some things actually do get done.

For example, we finally did sort the shed out. Though the sense of achievement was slightly undercut by the fact that ticking this resolution off the list was not exactly a decision as such, but an imperative. A rat had moved into the shed, so sorting the shed out was not exactly optional.

Returning to this list gave me quite a few other reasons — albeit quite low-grade ones — to be cheerful. I did quit Facebook this year. I found out about Snapchat, enough to know that I did not need to know anything about Snapchat. I even made the matching pyjamas purchase, though, at the time of writing, wearing the matching elements at the same time still evades me.

It was nice to give myself a pat on the back for these mighty accomplishments. I’m so impressed with myself that, to celebrate, I’ll be giving myself a year off from the resolutions. My only ambition for this year is to eat this chorizo carbonara as often as possible.