Resolutions and Regrets

New Year's Eve - that day in all the year when we either start brooding over the past year or forming resolutions of doing better in the New Year.  I must admit I'm sentimental.  Saying goodbye to the old year is almost like saying goodbye to an old friend.  I've felt comfortable writing 2012 and now I'll be struggling for the first few weeks at least to write 2013 instead.
My reminiscences on the dying year are speckled with "why did I's?" or "why didn't I's?"  as in "why did I let myself be persuaded to buy that pair of shoes that I can hardly take two steps in without falling over?"  and the annual lament "why didn't I give up eating chocolate like I intended?"  All too late now and I don't think any new set of resolutions I might care to dream up would fare any better when I take them out and go through them at the end of 2013.
Why do we wait until the beginning of the New Year to make resolutions?  It's the worst time of all for keeping them. If they are of a dietary nature they'll be broken by the time the wintry sun sets on the horizon.  Not eat chocolate?  Well, there's just that one box I got for Christmas and when that's finished of course I'll stop eating the stuff.  We know where that will end.  And the idea that I can become a stronger person well able to fend off persistent sales people in the shops?  Gone with the first piece of chocolate. For if I don't have enough strength to resist a box of chocolates what chance to do I stand against a smart sales assistant with "winter bargains" beaming in her eye telling me the dress was just made for me?  I'll be led to the cash desk with a stupid smile on my face, fancying I'm doing this because I decided to and not because I am like a piece of putty who can be persuaded to anything, especially when it is tagged "reduced price". 
So if anyone asks what my New Year resolutions are for 2013, my answer is going to be that I have liberated myself.  I'm going to eat chocolate, drink wine, buy stuff in the shops I don't really need.  Wait a minute - isn't that a kind of New Year resolutions in itself?  In which case I can be sure I'll keep it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!