Isn’t January wonderful!! Isn’t it glorious to feel so refreshed and motivated for the year ahead? So full of zeal and gusto??

And what’s the best thing about January? Why, New Year’s Resolutions, of course! You are not truly a person unless you march into a new year equipped with an arsenal of things that you are definitely going to achieve this year. And if some of those things are the same things you’ve marched into every other year with? Then, hell, you’ll be all the more equipped to achieve them!

Can you smell that? That, my friend, is the smell of your determination. It is a heady aroma of grease, sweat and pureed spinach; it is a wonderful smell! It is the smell of success! This is the year you WIN AT LIFE.

Are you excited? You should be. What’s not exciting about the prospect of making your own vegetable smoothie every single morning?? You can feel the goodness seeping into your body, washing away all the gin and cheese-induced negativity and evil kebab thoughts. You will take pleasure in perusing the gleaming vegetable aisles, and you will smile broadly at the checkout, because you know what? You cannot put a price on SUCCESS.

You will laugh in the face of the slimy mess that will slide over your kitchen worksurfaces every morning as you fumble bleary-eyed with the blender to create your cocktail of vitality and victory. And when you throw away three bags’ worth of rotting vegetables at the end of every week, you will not despair, my brave warrior: you will overcome this by BUYING SOME MORE.

But you will not stop there. You will become a GOD this year. If you haven’t already signed up to a gym membership, do it NOW. Perfection does not come to those who do not open January gym memberships! Think of the tingling anticipation of entering that brightly-lit, slightly moist cavern of likeminded winners, united in their pursuit of glory.

The thrill of the push up! The quiet arousal of the star jump! The dignified ebullience of the lunge! Run, run, my friend, on that treadmill, sticky with the fruits of previous winner’s mighty endeavours; squat your way to eternal happiness; hoist the dumbells of negativity into the cosmos of triumph! YOU ARE A GOD.

But the attainment of physical supremacy is only the beginning. This year will bring so much more! FEED YOUR MIND. Can you imagine the thrill of finishing your novel? Of completing that symphony? Of putting the delicate finishing strokes to that oil painting of an aubergine in peril? Of course you can imagine it. BECAUSE YOU ARE A WIZARD OF YOUR OWN DESTINY.

Kale is not the enemy. Spelt is a delicacy to be discovered and relished. That soft nightly slab of brie will be tossed asunder to make way for the yeast-zapping prowess of a pot of live biocultures. Those silken cubes of dark chocolate will shrink into the shadow of a carefully measured cup of unsalted almonds. Walking three miles out of your way to work in order to achieve your 10,000 steps a day? A triviality. Calling your mother every evening to talk about her psoriasis and the new conservatory? A simple pleasure. Replacing your nightly bottle of wine with a flask of camomile tea? You laugh in the face of such an easy task. Why have you never managed to do these things in previous years? Because you did not truly assemble the bracken of self-belief in the hearth of motivation and light it with the touch paper of success. But this year? This year will be different. YOU will be different.

I know, I know. I make it sound so easy. I am alarming you with the force of my belief in you. You are nervous – perhaps a little unsure – about your ability to withstand the pressure of cultivating and maintaining perfection in all aspects of your life, every single day. But, my soldier of prospect, you have the greatest tool within you to achieve all of this: the NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION.

So go – go, my darlings. Adorn your fridge with the post-its of determination, which will form a collage of your own victory. You are you. This is 2018.

And if you don’t do any of this in 2018, you can always try again next year.

 

AND IF YOU LIKED THAT…

… then you may be interested to know that my friend Stickman has made it onto a range of greetings cards! You can buy them on my Etsy site here. All proceeds go to putting Stickman through astronaut school.*

*May be a lie.