Ambition Overload and Lists Gone Amiss

Motto: New Year's Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. – Mark Twain

The sweet allure of a new year—a pristine canvas where we enthusiastically sketch out our grand plans for self-improvement, armed with resolutions as noble as they are ambitious. In these early days of January, optimism reigns supreme. We boldly declare war on vices, envisioning a version of ourselves that rivals superheroes. Yesterday's pizza is banished, the treadmill dust is blown away, and we declare a ceasefire on our ever-expanding Netflix queue.

Yet, dear reader, allow me to be your friendly harbringer of reality: fast forward to today, and you’ll find those well-intentioned resolutions on a rollercoaster ride to oblivion, a journey shared by many a gym membership card. What’s with this annual ritual anyway, this resolution roulette where the house always wins and the odds of lasting change are as elusive as a diet-friendly chocolate cake?

It all starts at year’s end with an ambition overload. In the intoxicating haze of holiday cheer, our ambitions skyrocket to the point where we're convinced we can achieve superhuman feats before February. Reality, however, begs to differ. We're convinced that, armed with newfound determination, we can achieve the impossible – like finding matching Tupperware lids (no point in wasting that leftover Olivier salad), or deciphering the cryptic instructions on that futuristic bicycle from the gym.

The calendar flips, it’s January 4th already, the Christmas tree may still be decorated, the lights twinkling in defiance of the mundane, but alas, the inescapable return to work manages to drag us back to Earth faster than gravity ever could. The grand plans of shedding weight or staying dry throughout the month are swiftly replaced with the humbling realisation that tackling the email backlog might be achievement enough. Work, like an unwelcome house guest, crashes the party, and suddenly, our ambitious resolutions are downgraded to the more achievable goal of not falling asleep in the first meeting of the year.

„Losing three kilos? Nope, I’m going to skip that one, short of donating some organs in the next twelve hours.” „Learn a new language? I learned to ask for five beers in Gaelic on an stag do in Edinburgh last August, so I think that’s definitely a tick.” (Gaelic, Edinburgh, stag do, don’t ask, alright?) „This one here says to go to the gym more often. Well, seeing as I never go to the gym, if I go this afternoon I can tick that one off – technically. Shut up, yes, I can!”  

It’s all about those damns lists and the need to make them in the first place. This need for making lists, a trait often mistaken for a hallmark of organization and preparedness, is a charming delusion we've all indulged in at some point. It's a practice that stretches back in time, echoing the meticulous habits of characters from classic literature. Take, for instance, the uncle of a certain J.K. Jerome, a man so committed to the art of list-making that one might think he was drafting blueprints for a moon landing rather than a trip to the local grocery store. Each item meticulously detailed, every contingency considered.

However, in an ironic twist that would make even Ricky Gervais applaud, this paragon of preparation consistently misplaced the list just before stepping out the door. A comedy of errors, you might say, or perhaps a cosmic reminder that sometimes, life finds its own script, and it's usually more absurd than anything we could have planned.

The pressure to make lists, particularly during the New Year’s resolution fever, is akin to a collective bout of amnesia. We witness friends, family, and even that neighbor who we only nod to in the hallway enthusiastically jotting down aspirations and commitments for the upcoming year. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) takes the form of a neatly numbered checklist.

So, like a leaf in the wind, we succumb to the trend. After all, who are we to resist the allure of collective self-improvement? In this annual masquerade of ambitious intentions, we join the ranks of list-makers, only to realize that our lists bear a striking resemblance to that uncle's vanished grocery tally—gone before the ink has even dried.  

In the grand scheme of things, perhaps the real achievement is not the items on the list but the camaraderie of misplaced intentions shared by list-makers across the globe. To cut a long story short, old habits are comfortable, like a well-worn pair of slippers. The allure of the familiar often trumps the discomfort of change.

In the end there’s a silver lining. The mere act of setting goals, no matter how ambitious, sparks a flicker of change. Perhaps the road to a new and improved version of ourselves is a winding one, with detours and pitfalls aplenty, but each stumble is a step forward.

So, here's to embracing the adventure, pitfalls and all, taking everything one step at a time, and being ready for the unexpected joys that come with striving for something more.