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Ryan Resolves
It’s the New Year and for some reason everyone wants to make a change. It is just a date on the calendar, but every year it sends some people into frenzy for fresh start. Out with the old and in with the new. Why New Year though, why not make the change on September 1st, February 19th or June 20th?
No, it has to be the NEW year because it has the word NEW in there. It's very stressful. I was at a loss as to what resolution to make. Various friends have told me with a hundred per cent conviction of their intention to make drastic and dramatic changes to their lives.
Get fit?
The most popular transformation that people seem to hope for is to lose weight and get fit. Anyone who uses the gym all year round knows to avoid it for the first two weeks in January as all the New year Newbie’s fight for the cross trainers. Now, I never understand the mentality of people who drive to a gym to walk on a treadmill but that just might be me missing the point.
Most of us pile on the pounds over Christmas so it seems natural to want to shed a few pounds in the New Year. The problem for me though is that most gyms these days have a coffee shop with really good cake coffee combo offers on the ground floor. You have to pass it on the way to the changing rooms. For me there is no competition between a locker room smelling of men or comfy chairs surrounded by the aroma of a cappuccino and carrot cake. By February the gym and coffee shop will be back to just a handful of regulars and normality will be resumed. I can’t see myself using a gym.
Quit drinking?
Another favourite resolution is Quitting Drinking. Well, it is all well and good to cut down, cut back and cut it out, but abstinence? Why do we have to go to extremes? It has taken me years of hard drinking to develop the tolerance to alcohol that I have. If I give up now I will be back amongst the light-weights. Think about it. The Pope, Theresa May, David Cameron are not renowned drinkers. Would any of us have had a good night out with those three? There would be no traffic cones on heads, no close encounters with females who wouldn’t look twice at you sober and no argument with a frustrated cab driver to round it all off. You can cut down and drink sensibly, but surely that should be an ongoing thing. Remember, a kebab is not just for Christmas. If you regularly get hammered you can enjoy it all year round. I can’t see myself giving up drinking.
No, I am not getting anywhere on the resolution front.
Time with family?
Many people resolve to spend more time with family and friends. How are you meant to do that if you are spending all your time at the gym? Another reason not to keep fit right there. Who can seriously say that they can spend time with family without a drink? It would seem that decisions have to be made. There must be something that I can do.
Learn something new?
I am told that ‘learning something new’ is a popular resolution. What can I learn that will help me? Plumbing would be useful. A few Christmases ago, I was robbed by a man armed with a set of spanners, a bucket and a tap washer in my own kitchen. Seventy five pounds it cost me.'That includes the call out fee mate,' he said with a smile. I resolved then and there to learn karate in the New Year to deal with any smug service men. But then that would get me into trouble so another possible resolution by the wayside.
I need something that I can do at home on the couch. That way it won’t cost me anything and, as I won’t be travelling, I will be environmentally-friendly. That is an achievable resolution. My first night in though and the teenage kids caught me. 'Can I have a lift', 'Can I have some money to go out', 'Can we order a Pizza'. It left me wanting to go out for a drink. I guess that the only thing that I can safely resolve to do is not make a new year’s resolution.
As they say: A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other. Happy New Year!
- If Christmas or the new year have stressed you out, try beatstress.uk – the only resolution you need.
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The Men’s Health Forum need your support It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking. In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to. It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for. We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing. Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can.
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