Resolutely not making Resolutions

September is my new year. I celebrate New Year’s Eve with the rest of them, or with those who like to party. However, for me, apart from forgetting to write the new year on cheques for at least the month of January, little changes when that date flips over. It’s still winter and the children’s school year continues much the same aside from a slight dip in enthusiasm from the heady heights of September. Far from being enthused by new year’s resolutions to make the changes I know I must make, the best I can muster is a determination to get all the jobs abandoned in the pre-Christmas frenzy, done before Easter. 

Eat less in January? What, pray, will we do with the Christmas Cake? Drink water not wine? But warm red wine is really so much more appealing in front of the glowing coals of the fire, isn’t it? Chilled water with a slice of lemon has its place, of course, as a pre-requisite for health or to be sipped in sunshine.

Then there’s the January Gym New Membership. I love my sport. It’s harder to motivate myself not to do it, than to fit it into my schedule but I say, don’t resolve to join a gym in January unless you want to make it particularly difficult for yourself! I’m a member of a sports centre, nothing fancy, but even that’s expanded over Christmas. Yesterday, I took one look in the door, turned on my heel and drove home for a warm wine in front of the fire. Buy an exercise DVD, spend three months’ membership on a wii or take up Zumba in the local hall; resolve to get fit, certainly, but save your gym resolution until March. The joining fee will be erased if you ask nicely and you’ll have room to swing your firming butt. The only pressure to step off the running machine will be your aching limbs and there’ll be no sour looks from the regular class member whose place you’ve taken in aerobics.

My new year is September. It’s a new school year, new uniform, new timetable, bed times returned to somewhere near acceptable. And there’s this energy. Where does it come from? I write, I blog, I submit, I even earn some money. I have my birthday and far from depression at the concrete verification that the lines on my face really are increasing so fast that they will soon all meet in the middle in a spaghetti-like confusion, I am buoyed with enthusiasm for this fantastically promising year and what it will have in store for me.

You may know that I am not the world’s most enthusiastic cleaner. I do the necessary to prevent disease and shame, I hasten to add, but with little satisfaction. It’s a thankless task to be got behind me so that I can sit down and write a little more guilt –free. Come September, however, and I don’t just want to clean the house, no, give me a spade and a skip and I’d happily re-build the whole thing. Windows? What’s the point in having them if we can’t see through them? They’ll only take a day and the girls are back at school. How did those skirting boards get so mucky without me even noticing, tusk, tusk, hand me the damp cloth. And so it goes on until the Christmas list kicks in and normal, essential-service-only is resumed.

I did make a resolution last year, but it was in June. It was one of those few decisions we make which was life-changing. This was when I launched into Larkism and it’s achieved the supposed impossible: more sleep yet more productivity. I am happy to say that this was a resolution I not only kept but would find difficult to un-do. Sometimes, I admit, I creep into late night scribbling which drifts into Facebook surfing and binge tweeting and I’m quite happy. But the next day, when that old befuddled haze hasn’t lifted until 8pm, I am reminded that I am better when I turn off the light before midnight.

So, whilst I have a healthy respect for anybody resolving to change something for the better in January, I am resolutely not making any resolutions before March. Maybe having experienced 43 new years, I know my limitations. But I’d love to know if you are a January resolution achiever. And if not, when should new year start for you?