I'm usually not a guy who does new year's resolutions. At least, that's what I used to think. Too performative, too random, and nobody ever sticks to them anyway.
But, as I'm growing older, which fortunately I still do, I've found that new year's resolutions work for, in some way. You see, I'm a creature of habit, and creating a habit needs some sort of starting point. And what better way to do that than at the beginning of a shiny new year?
So for 2024 I set out to start two new habits.
Resolution #1: Learn the guitar
Around twelve years or so ago, I decided I wanted to start learning to play the guitar. I bought myself an affordable electric guitar and an affordable amp, and for a while I learned riffs and whatnot from various YouTube videos. I never really got anywhere, even after I signed up for a guitar course. And the guitar started collecting dust. So what to do? Exactly, just go and buy another guitar, to force myself to recoup the cost by at least learning how to play it. That, of course, didn't quite work out either. I did like having that guitar, though:
Well, all things come to an end, and so did my lethargy. At the end of 2023, I decided it was time to start learning to play that thing in earnest. I downloaded Yousician, which is a great app for anyone who needs some gamification in order to stick to things. Finally, after Duolingo, another app to bind me to a streak.
And what should I say? It worked, somewhat. The first few months I practiced daily, then it kinda fell off, but I mostly kept my weekly streaks (I broke it twice, and am now, at the end of the year, at another 15 week streak). I am still nowhere near anyone who could, in good conscience, call themselves a guitar player, but I can play a lot more things than I did at the beginning of the year. Good enough!
What helped? That I bought a premium membership immediately, which again pushed me into the same sunk cost fallacy hole I like to dig for myself – only it wasn't a fallacy, because this time I made good use of the investment.
Resolution #2: Watch a film a day
Most of my days end in nights spent doing the things I feel I shouldn't do during the day: play games, watch TV-shows or films or binge on YouTube videos about food or swords.
What I found, though: I have issues sitting still (or laying still, seeing as all of that is done from my bed). And I noticed that my attention span was generally lacking. So I set myself a goal: watch one film a day (at night, usually), and do it without pausing the film for whatever, be it checking my phone or getting something to eat. I don't go to the cinema often anymore, but I wanted to replicate the feeling of watching something from start to finish in the manner it's supposed to be watched (without other people there).
And, well, I kinda stuck to it. I logged everything on Letterboxd (and automated the entries of my film-diary to be posted here as well) and this tells me that I managed 140 films. Which, fair, isn't even half of what I set out to do, but vastly more than the 63 films I logged for 2023. And it also populated my blog, which was not a new year's resolution, but still a nice thing to have (everyone should have their own website, btw).
Don't stress it, but don't slack completely
New Year's resolutions are fine. They gave me an incentive to develop new habits which I've wanted to do for a while, but never got around to doing. And they instilled in me a sense of accomplishment, which helped me pick things up again when I was slacking off too much. Speaking of slacking off: I think once you've created a habit, it's natural to follow it in a less rigid way. It takes the pressure off, and we all know, pressure kills (not just underwater).
I won't renew those two resolutions for 2025, seeing how they have now been formed into habits and I'll be doing them anyway.
What's coming in 2025?
Hence, I have space for two new resolutions. One is to finally let my Duolingo streak die. I've been doing Duolingo for a long while now, back in 2015 I even completed the Spanish course. But this year, I mostly stuck to what was necessary to keep the streak going, and that won't lead my anywhere. It kills the fun, while making sure I don't actually learn much. It's time for a reset, and I think once the streak has died, I can do just that.
The second resolution has to do with my reading habits. I read a fair bit of non-fiction for the podcast, but I don't read nearly as much fiction as I want to. Resolution for 2025: one fiction book a week (roughly). There's a massive back-log, not least most of the Rougon-Macquart cycle by Zola, which I had actually wanted to read during 2023 (I managed two of the twenty).
Let's see how that goes.
Until then, have a good rest of the year, and I'll see you on the other side.
