You Don't Need A New Year's Resolution

self improvement is overrated

Stumpies! I’m back. Did you miss me? Of course you did.

Well, Happy New Year, Stumpies. We made it… whodda thunk? Now, we all know the stereotypes about how a new year goes - we make some kind of a resolution, a promise to make something better, easier, cleaner, nicer… and then the paths diverge. For about 90% of us, whatever resolution we make simply doesn’t stick. Like, at all. We go to the gym for a week, and then we let them have 11 months of credit card charges for free. We start reading again, and then our Kindle rots in the junk drawer until you give it away to your local child who reads way too much and has no friends. And so on.

The other 10% of folks are what I like to call “insufferable freaks.” These are the 10% of people whose New Year’s resolutions actually stick. Unfortunately for all of us, the only way this occurs is for their resolution to become an extremely annoying part of their personality. We get it, Danny, you’re doing Dry January. No, I don’t want to try your mocktail; they’re all just sugar water with an umbrella in it. And if Veronica doesn’t shut up about how she’s being “kinder” to herself this year, I’m going to email her boss and kindly let them know that, in practice, that means Veronica will be “meditating” on company time roughly 1-5 hours per day. I’m not above narcing if you’re being annoying.

spoiler alert: it’s not gonna fix you!!!!!

Despite the predictable painfulness of this annual tradition, I’m sure that many of you are currently in the throes of various quests to fix/change/add/remove something about your lives. If this first week of the new year is going as I expect, this will also be the last week that many of you are attempting such foolishness. If you quit your resolution now, I will respect you more. If you avoid making a resolution next year altogether, I will respect you the most.

I refuse to bow to Big Improvement

Simply put, self improvement is a loada horseshit. Outside of your flaws and failings that genuinely harm yourself or others, leave the rest alone. Every time you pursue some hairbrained scheme to improve, you’re picking at the scab of yourself.

Roughly beginning at age five, life gets very hard for most of us. Going to school is hard [recall the noxious hum of the fluorescent lights as you do your sixteenth worksheet of the day]. Going to college is hard [recall the four thousand moments of panic that you will end up unemployed and penniless]. Getting a job is hard [i love groveling for dollars so i can live]. Hell, deciding on dinner everyday is fucken hard [any ideas on what i should eat tonight are more than welcome].

Unless you happen to be very rich - in which case, why are you reading my blog shouldn’t you be in the Bahamas somewhere forgetting that regular life exists? - you are at capacity. I am not guessing, surmising, or inferring; I am telling you, you are at capacity. Even the good things in your life are filling your capacity… you might do a hobby that you love, watch movies every Friday night, have board game night with your besties [this became cringe circa 2019, fyi]. Whatever it may be, I’m giving you permission to consider your dance card thoroughly punched.

Under these conditions, adding a New Year’s resolution to the pile is, at best, stupid, and, at worst, unethical to yourself. You will let things fall through the cracks if you try. And you might think “okay, well, all I’m letting slide is my penchant for watching tiktoks for three hours before bed.” But I would absolutely argue that watching tiktoks for three hours is serving you some kind of purpose that you aren’t acknowledging. In my personal experience, it probably means you’re fried like a goddamn egg and you just need to zone out. You should be allowed to zone out! If you try to take away whatever form of off-time you have created for yourself, I’ll be sure to send you letters from the psych ward you’re certainly going to end up in.

Replacing your current habits with normatively “good” ones is also just forcing yourself to exert more than you have [plus, it’s giving into social pressure, which is baby-brained shit]. There is a reason the current habit you have developed the way it did. There is a reason you are binge watching TV on Saturday afternoon instead of going for a run. We might classify both of these activities as things you can do in your down time, but they are far from equal, and they will not equally rejuvenate you. Swapping one for the other as if you can withstand the change is a great way to add a lot of misery to your days. Ultimately, I need you to stop considering your “bad” habits to be bad! Again, unless you are literally harming someone else in the process, you need to cool it with assigning ontological morality to the things you do to make it through the day.

You are literally fine the way you are

I don’t know most of you. I do know some of you. You aren’t perfect people, but at the same time you are Fine. You squarely exists within the bounds of a normal, functioning human being. To that end, I need you to shut up and listen to me here:

“I need to lose weight/exercise more/eat less/count calories/other bullshit of this vein!” No you don’t; you’re fine.

“I need to improve my mental health!” Stop thinking about yourself so much.

“I need to change my finances!” This isn’t a resolution this is just the game of life lol.

“I need to slow down!” If this is your resolution, you’re probably already more comfortable than average with this concept, ergo it is already done.

“I need to speed up!” Why? Who cares?

“I need to be better!” No you don’t; you’re FINE.

If TLC wouldn’t make a show about one of your perceived flaws, it’s not a big enough problem to genuinely worry about.

I can already hear the disagreement

I’m sure so many of you consider yourselves exempt from my scolding because you have decided to levy morality on certain actions. It is Good to be fit; it is Bad to be unfit. It is Good to read more; it is Bad to read less. Etc.

Look, I’m not saying that the different choices you make in life will have no consequences. Yes, if you wake up earlier in the morning, you can probably get more done each day. Yes, if you make ten new friends, you will probably have a more robust support system. My assertion here is that the universe is pretty good at finding its steady states, its least common denominators, its natural resting points. One might call it entropy if one were being a knowitall.

i love borrowing metaphors from physics that i barely remember.

Who you are today is a natural resting point, and changing that intentionally is going to be disruptive. Many of the things you people consider “bad” are simply things that require less energy/are more pleasant than things you consider “good.” Deliberately replacing “bad” things with “good” ones is going to overflow your capacity by the nature of it all. You probably aren’t working out as much as you want because you’re spending time with your kids who will grow up one day and not care if Dad had a snatched waist. You probably aren’t cleaning the dishes right after dinner because that window of time is the only time you have to not be on your feet all day. For the 10% of folks who do seemingly make their New Year’s resolutions stick, they’re achieving that by offloading the burden of having a personality [i.e., arguably giving away their most valuable asset in life] and replacing it with having a resolution. If you go around trying to improve all time, you’re just going to start failing in new places to make up for it. Within the bounds of normal, there is only so much goodness we can each maintain.

But then how will I ever get better????

I dunno, but you will. One day you will wake up on a Sunday morning and be bored and stiff, and you’ll go for a run because it genuinely sounds good. It’ll be slow and painful, but you won’t have forced the issue, so it’ll feel okay. One day you’ll stop the negative self-talk because you had a banger year at work, you’re feeling secure, and the confidence is finally starting to sink in.

Your capacity will fluctuate naturally, and it’s best to let the self improvement slot itself in when there’s room. Constantly making conscious efforts to reinvent yourself is a fool’s errand, and The Stump will not tolerate! I’m also just sick and tired of hearing everyone tell me about their damn weight loss and/or workout goals [it certainly will come as a surprise to no one that this is statistically the vast, vast majority of new years resolutions]. We get it, you read too many of those trashy magazines in line at the grocery store checkout and now you have A Complex. I think you look great.

you have my OFFICIAL Stump Seal Of Approval. don’t change a thing.

To demonstrate that I am practicing what I preach, I accidentally happened astutely elected to be super duper late posting this blog! Now, I could have decided to make myself a resolution this year to always post the blog consistently and on time, but it would have been futile; I clearly would have failed immediately; and I would have just ended up royally pissed at myself. I am at capacity! I have three jobs [down one from last time i complained about this hell yeah], an apartment to allegedly maintain, I run, I feed myself, I visit my family, I’m typically no later than 6 months late buying birthday presents for friends, I do laundry, I bother the editor, etc. I’m a cup runneth over! I thoroughly topped off my capacity last fall by deciding to start a blog in the first place, so why would I bother holding myself to any additional expectations??? I am doing my best out here, kids. So, now is squarely not the time for me to improve a single goddamn thing.

So, Happy New Year again, Stumpies. Free yourself from needless resolutions with me, and I will promise you this: I will not improve. Hate my delays responding to your texts? Too bad! I’m at capacity; it’ll improve when it improves. Think I shouldn’t take a shot at the bar after a meeting with my boss goes poorly? Bummer! I’ll meditate the issue away when meditation isn’t the more painful option. Here at The Stump, we are committed to being deeply, endlessly flawed individuals who do not give one iota of a damn that we do bad things. Raise your preferred poison of choice with me, and let’s finally ring in the wretched new year!

Questions for my gorgeously disastrous readers…

1. What’s something you’re proud of being terrible at?

2. Most annoying New Year’s resolution you’ve had to endure hearing about?

3. What’s one thing you used to think you should improve about yourself that you’ve now realized is stupid thanks to my brilliant rhetoric? On a scale from 1 (so freakin’ much) to 10 (incalculably much), how much did I improve your life by freeing you of this burden?

finance my bad habits that i refuse to kick