I Resolve Nothing This New Year
The joy of doing nothing
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“What are you doing on your vacation?”
“Nothing.”
“Have any plans for New Year’s Eve?”
“No, I’m not doing anything.”
“Have you made a New Year’s resolution?”
“Nope.”
No one has asked why after hearing my replies to any of those questions, but that would be going beyond the limits of small talk, so I get it. Asking why opens up a whole world of conversation we don’t have time for.
I’m on day three of my short vacation from work and thoroughly enjoying doing nothing. It amuses me that while I am, in fact, doing lots of things, very few of them count as productive, so they don’t count. According to some. Maybe to a lot of people. I’m not feeling productive enough to find out.
I’m also not feeling productive enough to create a vision board for the coming year, as I’ve done many times in the past. I haven’t chosen a word for the year. I don’t have new goals. I’m still working on the old ones. I am a life coach’s nightmare. There’s no pulling yourself up by your bootstraps when you won’t get out of your slippers. They’re really warm and cozy slippers, so I’m good with that.
On this New Year’s Eve, I’m constantly reminded of our need to start over and start fresh every calendar year. I’m over it. Don’t get me wrong, I love cracking open a new planner, but mostly because it still has that new paper smell. Yes, that’s a thing to some of us who still write things down on paper. What I’m over is the fact that new year resolutions are just a riff on our obsession with productivity.
Think we don’t obsess about productivity? Just ask Google.
Society’s Obsession With Productivity
Of course, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be productive at our jobs, especially if we want to keep them. And it doesn’t mean we have to let our homes become biohazards. But we don’t have to go overboard. If you need to work 60 hours a week at your job, it might be time for another job. A pile of laundry hurts no one.
Most of our resolutions revolve around some form of productivity. We’re going to do more of something, or start something…
