New year, old me

She made the usual list of the usual resolutions and – as usual – they’ve been abandoned. Amie Richardson has started 2018 in her customary style.

Almost two weeks into the new year, many of us will be looking for absolution rather than resolution. Absolution for the return to bad habits after those New Year good intentions fall by the wayside, absolution from continued overindulgence (despite vowing to keep your body a temple of clean eating), and absolution for the smarty comment made about so-and-so’s bikini on New Year’s Day after promising the night before to be less of a biatch.

That glorious New Year New You that introduced herself at 12.01am January 1 sits deflated in the corner, alongside the balloons from the New Year party.

For a compulsive procrastinator like me, New Year resolutions offer a perfect excuse to put off something I dread doing. The sitting-on-the-couchwatching-Netflix-and-eating-chips-Amie loves the idea of healthy eating, taking my boys into the wilderness and conquering idyllic mountains and exercising the tolerance of a saint. Unfortunately, about 12 hours later, I’m not so keen. On any of it.

But a new year… well, that’s an opportunity not to be missed.

For as long as I can remember I’ve offered up a long list of mostly impossible tasks to achieve with each new year.

• I will go to the gym every day.

• I will lose 5kg, 10 kg, 15kg.

• I will travel to a new country. I will learn a new language/instrument/craft/talent. Or several – of each.

I will stop working late.

I will grow all my own vegetables.

I will be more tolerant.

I will only eat the vegetables I have grown. And so will the boys.

I will be present – and never think about what is coming next.

I will stop complaining about people. Even when what I say makes other people laugh. I will stop talking over people. Even when what I have to say is hugely important and what they are saying strikes me as pointless drivel.

I will stop sweating the small stuff.

I will prepare nutritious interesting meals every night with everything made from scratch.

I will sleep more.

I will stop looking at crap in magazines/online/on Facebook.

I will listen better.

I will be better.

Once the list is constructed, I barely think about it again. Somehow the ideas of what I could (or should) do to improve myself momentarily exorcise my demons of self-doubt. In that list-creating moment, I am all the things promised on paper: a travelling quinoa-fuelled martyr, with the strength and fitness of an elite athlete known for her relaxed, balanced attitude to life and her ability to listen and offer wise advice.

And then, in less time than it takes to create the list, New Year New Me is gone and I’m left with the Old Me in a new calendar year, searching through my friends’ pics from New Year’s, squawking with laughter over some of their terribly worthy

posts and calling out to the boys that we’re having “easy tea” baked beans on toast for dinner. Hello 2018.