{MINIPROMPT}: An Incomplete List of Failed New Year’s Resolutions

Look, we’re not perfect. No one is. But we’re trying to get better, every day and every year. Sometimes, those goals start with a resolution. Sometimes, those goals end by about March 3rd. So, we just want to be honest with our readers. Here’s what we haven’t done in 2023.

Jay Heltzer

1. Haven’t started White Lotus, Season 1, Episode 2 yet after resolving to start a new show to stream.
2. Still eating ice cream after 10 P.M.
3. Yoga shmoga.
4. My mental health now has its own Twitter account.

Eric Mochnacz

In an attempt to jump on a viral Twitter trend, I tweeted “I don’t want to BeReal, I want to BeRailed.”

Neither have happened.

Kevin Shea

Start eating better after your cardiac surgery, they said.

Jan 1 – Kale Salad

Jan 2 – Roasted Beets

Jan 3 – Pizza and blame heredity not diet

Sarah Razner

Every year I tell myself I’m only going to think more positively, see the glass as half full rather than half empty. But when by the first week of January—let’s say by January 6th for the sake of argument—the world has decided that we should shatter every glass and let the water run anywhere, it can be a struggle to maintain the brightest of attitudes. I doom spiral. I judge. I sulk. I try to find a ray of hope and think humanity and I will have better luck tomorrow, or in February, maybe July.

Then another glass breaks, I laugh at my own naïveté, and move on. Maybe next year.

Victoria Buritsch

Okay, this year is the year that I declared war on the banana gnats.

I finally freed my house of the small critters after months of a war of attrition. And I swore to myself as my New Year’s resolution that I would never buy bananas again. If I bought bananas they would be pre-peeled and frozen. Or I would be eating out and would not be bringing the peels home.

But no.

Somehow on one of my orders from Quality Food Centers, It snuck in my basket. I don’t remember if I put them in my cart physically at the store or if I put it in the cart online by accident. I’ve been doing the Instacart thing: it’s not impossible.

Either way, three bananas made it into my cart.

Their banana peels birthed a new nation of fruit flies.

I’m livid. 🤬

Jillian Conochan

Blah blah blah I don’t believe in resolutions; don’t identify as goal-oriented; time is a flat circle, and all that. Mandatory disclosures out of the way, why is it so hard to add stretching to your regimen? Makes no damn sense. On the scale of “doing nothing” [1] and “if my heart rate increases three notches, I may go into cardiac arrest” [10], stretching is a cool 3, and yet, the least compelling station on my healthy living journey.

Sydney Mineer

My goal for this year? To not buy any new books, and instead read the books I already own…

It took all of one month for me to add a provision to this: If I’m on vacation, I’m allowed to buy a book.

I ended up buying two, but look, I went to two used bookstores and only bought one at each. Still huge growth for me!!

Katie Novotny

I said I was going to stick to a budget.

I have gone over my budget for the past two months. Like way, way, over.

*whispers* goodbye homeownership dreams