New Year’s Resolution

Happy New Year’s Day everybody. Wow. A whole new year. What is a year? It’s funny to think about how we measure time, planetary rotations around the sun. What if some day we set up a colony on Mars? Will they follow our Earth calendar or will they have something unique? How will people on both planets coordinate interplanetary vacations? I’m sure it won’t be impossible, but it won’t be as easy as just randomly deciding to blast off this time next year. Because, this time next year, what, Earth? Mars?

Did you know that on one of Saturn’s moon, Europa, a year lasts only twenty-one days? What if we set up colonies there, will people live to be like five thousand years old? I didn’t even look that up, by the way, that Europa fact. You know how I knew it? I didn’t. I just made it up. You really shouldn’t just go around blindly believing everything you read on the Internet. That could maybe be one of your New Year’s resolutions. Not to just accept total bullshit as fact.

One of my resolutions is to only write true stuff on this blog, from now on. Not that I ever write anything fake. Only strictly seriously serious stuff here, like the title of the blog says. But now it’s official, now it’s a resolution. I mean, that whole Europa thing was just a clever trick, to get you to see how gullible you really are. If you’re sitting there thinking to yourself, “Well I wasn’t convinced,” I hope you take comfort in telling that to yourself, but we both know you believed me, if only just a little bit. I’m not even sure if Europa is one of Jupiter or Saturn’s moons. Not that it really matters.

But I have to think of more resolutions. I can’t just have one. And this is really all my fault, because last year I made a really half-baked resolution, that next year, which is now this year, I’d make several New Year’s resolutions. So I got off the hook last year, but sure enough, and I knew this would happen, it’s come around to bite me in the ass here. I guess I could just make several resolutions, each one promising even more resolutions for future years. Like one resolution could be that next year I’ll make five resolutions. And then another resolution could be that in 2015 I’ll make ten resolutions. And, now that I’m thinking about it, that seems like a pretty decent plan.

No, I can’t do it, I’ll just be hurting even more next year when I not only have to make five resolutions, but I’ll be stuck, unable to resolve to make more resolutions for years to come. Because I’m going to run out of future years eventually. I guess I could just assume that I’ll live to be two hundred. But I don’t want to die with all of these unfulfilled resolutions. I should just bite the bullet and do it, right now, make more resolutions.

OK, so, how about, I resolve to … to what? What’s the point? What do I need a resolution for? I’m already doing great. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Man, but then I’m not fulfilling last year’s. Geez, I’m in quite the pickle. I guess I could resolve to get a haircut next week. Not this week. I think I’m busy this week. But definitely next week. This is going to be tricky, because getting a haircut, that’s something that I’m always forgetting to do. I get out of the shower, I’ll look at my hair and think, wow Rob, time to get a haircut. But I won’t. The next thing I know I’ll be going to bed, like the whole day flew by and I didn’t even think twice about getting a haircut.

I always leave it until it gets so unruly that somebody eventually says to me, usually my boss or somebody else who’s “in charge” or me, they’ll go, “Gee Rob, getting about time for a haircut, no?” And I could go on forever about how I hate being told to do things in the form of a question, about saying a sentence and then finishing it with the whole, “no?” like it’s a suggestion, or a question. But even though I’m angry, I’ll be like, shit, I must look crazy. I have to get a haircut right this second. And I’ll get one and I’ll look so dramatically clean-cut, especially considering how bad it looked.

Regardless, this is why I never get a haircut until the last second. I never think about it. I always get bossed around. And then I actually love all of the compliments I get, “nice haircut!” which wouldn’t be there if I got it cut regularly enough so that my hair always looked the same length.

Fuck it, I’ll try to get a haircut next week, but I’m not making that a New Year’s resolution. Too easy to forget. Too easy to start 2013 on the wrong foot, on having already broken a New Year’s pledge. Nah, I’ll just do what I said earlier, resolve five for next year and then another resolution for ten in 2015. Whatever. Happy New Year’s. I hope your year is great, almost as great as I hope mine is, just slightly less great than mine, good enough really.