Four Realistic New Year's Resolutions You Should Make This Year

The year 2015 is almost upon us - a phrase that will make me feel incredibly old when I look back on this post in a few years' time - and that means it's time to make the traditional and dreaded New Year's Resolution. Every year, we make vague, nebulous promises to better ourselves, and since we're all shitty in the exact same ways, I can already predict what your New Year's resolutions are going to be. Unless you're the sort of person who starts every morning by snorting a line of protein powder off a barbell, you're going to resolve to lose the small-child-sized lump of blubber you've been carrying around on your stomach, and finally get in shape. If you don't get to work each morning by sliding down a novelty firepole to your desk at a funky tech startup, you're probably going to resolve to spend less time with your face buried in your phone. Every single one of us is a procrastinating shithead, so we're going to resolve to finish the project/masterpiece/Great American Novel we've been working on. And you know what?

It has to stop.

Cut this shit out.

Resolutions are such flimsy promises that it's socially acceptable to pledge yourself to a life of vegan dieting, yoga and sobriety on January 1st, and then spend January 2nd passed out in front of Netflix with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and the sad remains of an entire cheesecake squished into the other. No more. This year, let's make some more interesting resolutions. Creative resolutions. Resolutions we can actually keep. Resolutions like:

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So There's This Man Named John...

So there's this man named John, and he runs the only flower shop in his town. All the people in town go to John's flower shop for everything; they turn to him for all their weddings, funerals, engagement parties, birthdays, apologies, Valentine's days, anniversaries and proms. His shop has flourished since the day it opened, and he's managed to make a comfortable living for himself.

Then one day, that all changes. Brother Anthony, a local man of the cloth, opens his own flower store to earn a little extra money for a new belfry. Of course, all the local churchgoing people feel obligated to shop at Brother Anthony's flower shop instead of John's, and sure enough, John's sales start to decline. Pretty soon, things start to look grim for John; his business is losing money, and he knows that if things don't change soon, he won't have enough money to pay his bills and keep the flower shop open.

So John tries desperately to turn things around. He lowers his prices, but a few days later, he gets word that Brother Anthony has dropped his own prices to match him. He gets in new, exotic stock, but of course, Brother Anthony does the exact same thing. Finally, John walks down to the rival flower shop and begs Brother Anthony to close his doors before John is ruined. The Brother sympathizes, but he isn't willing to budge until the belfry is paid for. 

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