By Dakota Parks for Downtown Crowd
*Note, this is a satire piece for anti New Years resolutions
So, you’ve maxed out a credit card holiday shopping, gained a couple pounds from pumpkin pie and sugar cookies and spent the last month trying to avoid a fight with your problematic uncle over the dinner table—and now, the world wants you to become a better person in less than a week. As if the holidays weren’t whiplash enough, now you’re making a list and checking it twice for things to change about yourself. Did you know humans have been failing resolutions for more than 4,000 years? Why start now? According to U.S. News & World Report, around 80 percent of people fail their New Year’s resolutions by mid-February. Who says you need self- improvement? Throw out that self-help book your high school friend on Facebook recommended and indulge in the same old you. Don’t break any habits or try to be a better human. Trash your New Year’s resolutions for a more enjoyable way to spend January—recommended by zero doctors, MLM schemes or concerned mothers. Cheers to being the same old, terrible you in 2022!
Less Screen Time?
So, your eyeballs feel like the Sahara Desert and you’re thinking about all the productive adult things you could accomplish in the seven hours a day you spend staring at screens? Don’t be a wuss! Grab a pair of blue light glasses that all the tech bros wear and go binge watch the new season of Tiger King. Bonus points if you actually put on a pair of jeans and go to a movie theatre like the good old days. Think of that buttery AMC popcorn and those sticky soda floors calling your name!
Get Organized?
You know what’s better than taking a label maker to your spice cabinet or sparking joy by color coding your linens in the hall closet? Have a self-care-induced shopping spree. I bet Marie Kondo has never heard about Crazy Cazboys, Dirt Cheap or the T&W Flea Market. Go dig through bins and mystery boxes at Pensacola’s premiere retail liquidation stores or shop the stalls at the flea market and find everything you never knew you needed.
Drink More Water?
We all know the drill—when your mouth is dry, you have the twinge of a dehydration headache and you haven’t peed all day, it’s time for an iced coffee! Don’t listen to the health nuts that say you need to nourish your body with superfluous things like water. Beer is 95 percent water and coffee is 98 percent water. Give your body what it really needs.
Lose Weight?
Forget being held hostage on a Peloton or having a stalker watch you through the hi-tech Lululemon workout mirror that looks like its straight out of Disney Channel’s possessed Smart House. Take your body-ody-ody down to Bluejay’s Bakery, or any local confectioner, and shove a cake pop in the next cardio Karen’s mouth that tells you to slim down in the New Year.
Spend Less Money?
Who needs a 401K or retirement plan when the polar ice caps are melting and the honeybees are dying? Instead of saving or investing it, take that fat wad of cash that your family gave you for the holidays because “you’re so hard to shop for” and go blow it on those glorious after-Christmas sales. Wipe the shelves clean of all the clearance Christmas candy or start a fist fight at Cordova Mall when you take the last 70 percent off Merry Maple Pancake lotion at Bath & Body Works.
Spend More Time with Friends and Family?
Let’s pretend its 2020 and social distance. Or, spice things up and send your ex a New Year’s text. Not good enough? As if you didn’t spend enough time with them over the holidays, or with your eyes glazed over on the family Zoom, you can treat your loved ones to an escape room! Visit Escape on Palafox, and while your family is locked together in a room fighting over clues and how your dad never does the dishes, you can enjoy a nice beer by yourself at one of the many nearby bars. Just tell them you forgot a jacket in the car and never return.
Travel more?
You just spent all your money! The only place you’re traveling now is your back yard. After you get done fist fighting over lotions and candles in Cordova Mall, walk on down to VR Adventure Zone, or steal your little cousin’s VR headset, and see a whole new world—a new fantastic point of view, a dazzling place you never knew. Behind these WALL-E, trash goblin looking goggles, you can imagine you’re a whole new person, falling in love in Paris or beating up a monster on the Eiffel Tower—all without resolutions or actual plane tickets.
Cook More at Home?
Sure, you can give yourself the adult pep-talk that “we have food at home,” or commit to buying more groceries but end up with a random assortment of food that may or may not rot in your produce drawer, or you could join the “Pensacola Foodies” Facebook group, where the camera eats first, and never burn a casserole again! Let strangers on the internet hypnotize you with subliminal messages while you trance scroll for three hours and the algorithm tells you what you need for dinner tonight.
Stop Procrastinating?
You really made it to the end of this article like you’re not reading it in a café somewhere or scrolling on the toilet procrastinating on getting work done. Repeat after me, I’ll stop procrastinating tomorrow.
Ask Palafox Street
Downtown Crowd hit the pavement during Gallery Night to see what the people of Palafox Street had to say about New Year’s resolutions. What better way to find out how to trash your resolutions than to talk to people getting trashed? No beers were harmed in the conducting of these interviews.
Jerry and Juna Smith, Ages 68 & 70, Retired
Do you ever make New Year’s resolutions?
We did when we were younger. Now that we’re retired, nothing ever changes. Every day is Saturday when you’re retired.
Gage Rogers, Age 20, Artist
If you made New Year’s resolutions, which one would you immediately break?
I would probably try to eat better then immediately go back to eating trash. I feel like you break resolutions right away. Like you make your resolution, then you break it the next day.
Tom & Chelly Moore, Ages 42 & 41, PhD Student and Delivery Driver
Are you making any resolutions?
Tom: I think I’m going to try the one to one million challenge where you try to take $1 and turn it into $1 million. I have no idea if I’ll be successful.
Do you like or dislike resolutions?
Chelly: I feel like they’re a fun way to get a little insight into your friends. You learn about what your friend’s hopes and dreams are, which might crash and burn but maybe you can help them achieve them or support them when they don’t work out.
Dayna Pinnock, Age 20, Nonprofit work for CARE
Do you ever make New Year’s resolutions?
I stopped believing in New Year’s resolutions a long time ago. I don’t do resolutions; I do game plans. I know exactly what I want to get done and put my mind to it. I want to own my own business and open a homeless shelter to help people.