I’ve been brainwashed by all the inspirational hashtags and mottos into thinking about new year’s resolutions. My first thought was not to make any, obviously. I can’t actually be bothered to look back through past blog posts (and if I can’t even be bothered to look at my own, I think I’m safe to assume no one else is going to make the effort to do so) but I’m pretty sure I made a big thing last year about resolutions signifying a need to change, and change suggesting something was wrong, and about actually being quite happy with things as they were. Something like that anyway.

The ‘thing’ this year, according to the social media bible, appears to be to resolve to do something extra, rather than to stop doing something. We should practise more self love, apparently. Be less self-critical. Instead of focusing on things we want to stop doing, we should expand our horizons. Embrace the opportunities. With unicorns, probably.

Sounds fine in theory. I’m all for doing more. In fact, trying to cram too much into my days is one of my biggest flaws. It’s something I might resolve to stop doing, if I were making resolutions of the giving things up sort. But as I’m not… I started a little list of the extra things I might take up, the things I’d like to do more of. It’s quite hard to see where you draw the line between self criticism and aspiration. I mean, resolving to do more of something kind of indicates you don’t think you’ve been doing enough of it so far. Anyway I came up with a couple. I won’t write them down. Firstly because nobody cares about someone else’s random resolutions. And secondly because that might mean I have to stick to them.

One thing that’s not on the list, though, is to eat more Chinese food in 2018. Which is probably a good thing, as I appear to have eaten more than a year’s worth in the closing moments of 2017 alone.