January is the time of year most people start trying to live out their New Year’s Resolution. For those of you who don’t know what that is, a New Year’s Resolution is an empty promise you make to yourself at the start of every year to try to be a “better person.”  For most people, this is something you say you are going to do without actually doing it. For others, you do it for about a month before reverting back to your old, lazy-ass ways.

Some people set very high goals for themselves at the start of each year. These are the “reach for the moon because even if you miss you’ll land among the stars” type and I’m sure they have that saying in cute decorative letters some place in their homes, diaries, or pinned on their Pinterest board. I am the opposite. If I do set a New Year’s goal for myself, I aim low because if I reach that goal, I will be quite pleased with myself, in turn, boosting my confidence. If I don’t reach it, I just convince myself it wasn’t worth it in the first place.This way, if I reach my goal or don’t reach my goal, I’m still content.

My first New Year’s out of college my resolution was to “read more books.” I have never been a big reader, in fact, I was once quoted as saying that “I’d rather do anything else but read.” But I kept telling myself that I was so busy in school that I just never had time to do leisurely reading. So I tried it out. And it was a complete fail, but I think it was because my approach was wrong. I started out trying to read this extremely depressing autobiography about a guy growing up in poverty in Ireland. I’m sorry, but I go to work from 8:30-5:00, five days a week, I don’t need anything else depressing in my life. Also, when I realized the man who wrote the book was from Ireland, I kept reading the book in my head with an Irish accent. This was both time-consuming and exhausting. In addition, the book was very thick, and it was a hard cover so it was heavy, making it really hard to hold up when lying in a reclined position. My goal was to read more books not to get Michelle Obama arms, so yes, I gave up.

One good thing did come of this failed resolution though. You see, I use my phone as my alarm every morning and I started to realize that when I left the book on my bedside table, I could place my phone on the book, creating a shorter reach for me when I go to turn off my alarm in the morning. Then I got a book from the library, putting it on top of the other book already on my bedside table. This added more height and also shortened the distance from my bed to my phone, thus, minimizing the exposure to the cold air my arm had to endure when removing it from underneath my warm blankets to shut off my alarm early in the morning. Am I a genius or what?!

For this New Year’s I considered a few different resolutions. The first was “put on lotion more.” You see, my skin gets rather dry and irritated in these winter months, I should really apply lotion more but I don’t. I quickly eliminated this resolution citing it as a safety hazard. Have you ever put lotion on in a closed-door room and then tried to turn the knob to get out? Yeah, good luck, you’ll be trapped in there for at least 20 minutes with those greasy paws. This has happened to me one too many times-no thank you. Plus lotion is usually cold when you put it on and I have zero tolerance for cold things.

The second resolution I considered was “Eat out less/eat healthier foods.” Plain and simple this just would not work because eating out makes me happy. And eating out usually presents to me with the opportunity to get a fountain pop. I love fountain pop so this was a no-go. “Eat healthier” wasn’t going to happen either because I get crabby when I deprive myself of junk food. So I scratched that one off the list. I’m really only thinking of others with this reasoning, no one wants to be with a crabby person.

The third resolution was “drink more water.” There is water in Diet Coke right? And there is water in fountain pop, correct?Ok that one may be doable.

The fourth and final New Year’s resolution I considered was “become less selfish.” But then I selfishly thought about how inconvenient that would be for me all year long. As I mentioned earlier, I am a middle child and we are just wired different. We have to be selfish in order to get what we deserve. My sister Bridget (another middle) and I actually live by the motto “If I don’t take it, someone else will.” Meaning, anytime anything is offered to us we try to be the first to snatch up the biggest and the best of whatever is in front of us because if we don’t get the best, someone else might. And we can’t have that. This mindset is very different from oldest children. For example, when my siblings and I were little and there was, say, one Oreo left in the package (this was back in our “Reduced Fat Oreo” stage, times were tough), my sister Maggie (the oldest) would see it and offer it up to one of her younger siblings. If I were to see there was one Oreo left, I would grab it, taunt my siblings with it by dangling it in front of them but just out of arms reach, quickly eat it, and then continue to brag about eating the last cookie later on that day. That is just how my thought process works. I’ve been selfish for 23 years, I can’t go changing now.

After taking all of this into consideration I decided to would be in my best interest to not have a new years resolution for 2015. I’m starting the year of right, by being honest with myself-I am a lazy, dry-skinned, junk food eating girl. It may be a new year, but it’s the same old me. Deal with it.