KEY POINTS:
New year's resolutions are to be avoided at all costs.
Beginning the year with a list of fantasist ambitions unachievable to all but the most dedicated obsessive compulsive just seems like a set-up.
You proceed through the year painfully aware that as each of the 365 days pass,
you are nothing but a sad loser. You lack any determination or self-control, you're not losing weight, you aren't exercising regularly, you haven't given up smoking and you are still drinking enough to give your liver a serious work-out most days.
More of us on New Year's day should simply down a restorative whisky and list the things we're really good at and will continue to do for another year - no matter how destructive or disagreeable to the latest medical findings those habits may be.
I have reached this conclusion after making the mistake of drawing up my own list of resolutions for 2008, obviously suffering from some delusion that I cared. That was the year I would lose weight and reach the size 12 of my dreams.
As I climbed into my well-worn and rather tight size 14 jeans on January 1, 2009, I heard them murmur "fat arse".
I also determined that I would make more friends outside of the media so that I would no longer have to sit around discussing Noelle "stop me if you've heard this one before" McCarthy or Paul "shy but retiring" Holmes. Despite a good effort with a recent friend edit, I now have three new media friends and not one ambulance driver in sight. The sheer drama of potential call-out stories placed that profession top of the friends-wanted list, closely followed by zoo worker.
On my list were also the hopeful two words "finish" and "novel". Despite a much-talked-about and distressingly lonely two weeks in Venice, the difficult first novel remains in my hard drive labelled "That Bloody Book". I am obviously the only New Zealand journalist unable to write one.
I also decided that becoming a runner might be a nice idea. I did run for about five months - not continuously, obviously. My crowning achievement was an hour-long run along the waterfront, during which I ran through the pain and ended with a bung knee which still hasn't come right and will no doubt give me gyp until the end of my life.
The desire to do more volunteer work was an interesting addition to the list, considering the word "more" need not have been added.
I rang a reading recovery group and got an answer phone and briefly considered answering an ad to read an inquisitive old man the newspaper every day, but that's as far as it got.
My friend suggested that I might like to add "stop wearing Kumfs, especially when out at night and trying to look hot". She was alarmed at my tendency to turn up well-dressed from top to ankle, where suddenly my footwear took a turn for the comfortable as opposed to the glamorous.
I did wear a pair of very sexy high heels a couple of times, but after limping for days afterwards and having to listen to my runner's knee objecting loudly, I returned to the soothing bond I have with my Kumfs.
As a homage to the green movement, I added "eat one meat-free meal a week" and "get a rain tank". Meat-free meals are a great idea, but only if you can keep count of all 21 meals you consume in the week.
And the water tank never got past the heated debate about whether it should be plumbed into the toilet and the washing machine or just the toilet.
The one entry on the list I felt certain I could achieve was the desire to stop writing in bed.
It doesn't matter which way you dress it up as something great writers like Proust used to do, you're still a middle-aged woman, in her nightie, with mad hair, three empty coffee cups and a plate covered in toast crumbs on your bedside table, tapping on a laptop at midday.
My bed says happy New Year.
