Monthly Resolutions

You know that feeling you get whenever a new year arrives? That feeling of that you’re invigorated, motivated, ready to punch life in the face and say “world, I’m coming out to get you!”

And with that feeling, you start doing stuff. Those stuff may be things you’ve always wanted to do, or may have already been doing in the past but due to some reason or other, you slowly (or suddenly) stopped doing it. Then a new year comes along and you’re like “that’s it! I’m gonna get this done!” or something along those lines.

New years are typically when people reset their goals, saying things like “in 2015, I’m gonna read more books!” or “in 2015, I’ll shed 15 kilos!” These sayings or objectives go by the name of “new year’s resolutions”, and, for a lot of people it seems, these things are an annual ritual.

And people usually do start doing those things they said they’d do. We’d suddenly start picking up more books, make more of an effort to get in shape, start writing more, all that hoopla. It’s that magical sense of invigoration and motivation that I mentioned earlier that drives us to do more of those things because those goals and resolutions are still on the back of the mind, so we pick ourselves up and go.

But of course, very rarely do these resolutions stick or get achieved. Usually by February, one would be hard-pressed to retell another person what their new year’s resolution was. And then we go about our daily lives, doing things we’ve always been doing, and not doing things that we’ve always been ignoring. Things go back to normal, one would say.

I was recently struck by this phenomenon. Why am I SO motivated to do things at the beginning of the year? And I’ve noticed that I’ve been getting a lot of stuff that I’ve always wanted to do done within these past couple of weeks. I’ve been writing more, reading more, even recorded a new song (you can catch that at www.soundcloud.com/inianwarhadi ) because, as my argument stated earlier, there’s just this feeling that takes over me that makes it feel possible to do all these things.

And I’m actually scared. Scared that this feeling will fizzle out by the end of the month, and I’ll be plain old unmotivated, unproductive Anwar again and not do anything noteworthy for the rest of the year. Because, looking back, that’s what happens, every single year without fail. Why can’t that feeling be present at the beginning of every month, or even of every week, or even of every day?

Maybe it’s because we don’t have resolutions every day or every week or every month. We only have them every year, and we are jolted into remembering that time is passing by whenever the final number of the date changes. We forget that we get a month older every month, a week older every week, and a day older every passing day. Thus is the human, ever forgetful.

In an effort to solve this predicament, I propose that we do resolutions more often, like monthly resolutions. And we be specific about them. We say to ourselves “In January 2015, I’m going to write a piece for my blog every damn day!” and no matter how sucky or writer’s-blocked you feel about it, you get on the computer and you write some stuff up. Only for that month. Then move on to the next month and say “In February 2015, I’m going to write a piece for my blog every damn day!” again, so that you’ll always have something to prove, to yourself more than anyone.

Of course, I’m writing this for myself, mostly. I know that if I made weekly resolution, I’d be too lazy to think of that stuff up so often, apatah lagi kalau daily. I think this is going to be what works for me, and I’m going to try and roll with it.

So resolutions for January 2015:

- write a piece for the blog every damn day

- make music as often as you can, like, one song every two-three days

- read every damn day, and lift a quote from whatever you’re reading and post that on your Facebook page.

p/s - if you don’t have time for it, MAKE time for it.