MODERN FAMILY
IT might be a new year but despite our best attempts it is not really a new us.
The brave new resolutions fortified by a couple of glasses of fizz just a couple of days ago have, like the bubbles, already popped.
What was I thinking? How on earth was I going to steer clear of the treats left over from the New Year’s Eve party?
The chocolate brownies were winking at me every time I opened the fridge and that bottle of wine was just asking to be opened.
How I thought I was going to get to the gym in the first few days with the children still on holiday proved my foolhardiness, and as for getting super-organised – how did I not plan for my innate ability to be an airhead when deciding that I could just magic myself into the next Kirstie Allsopp?
It had all started so well. I spent New Year’s Eve choosing a lovely new diary, used my favourite pen to fill in what I thought were all the right dates, and generally felt very smug with myself.
It didn’t take long for me to be brought well and truly back down to earth by using the “correct” dates in said diary to book the right holiday flights for the wrong week.
Thankfully, my more organised friend saved the day again when she just happened to mention that the February half-term was very late this year. I pointed back that according to my super-duper, super-right diary she was wrong. She wasn’t. (Just in case anyone else is in the same boat the February half-term in Wales is different from everywhere else in the UK – see how even the most superorganised of people could get it wrong?)
It is up there with the time I booked the flights for the wrong-way-round airports and didn’t realise until we got to check in, or the time I forgot to book one of the children on the flight – and we still don’t talk about the car keys I left on the aeroplane in Spain. Three costly mistakes.
I am not the only one in the family to have already broken my resolutions – son senior still hasn’t cleaned his dirty rugby boots, son junior only managed about an hour of being nice to his brother (and for most of that hour they had been in different rooms), and the better half didn’t make any because he is apparently “perfect” as he is!
I thought it would be higher, but 35% of us who make New Year resolutions break them by the end of January. And only 23% see them through to completion.
That is why I have envy for the woman who, instead of resolving to stop doing things, has resolved to keep doing things that are important to her. Personally, I like her style and am going to try to stay positive no matter what life throws my way, to be nice to others, and try to be the best person I can be.
I couldn’t find any stats for people, like me, who break them within the first few days, but I am sure I am not the only one – and there is always next year!