Reasonable resolutions for 2014

Speak your mind.

 If you have a strong opinion about something - say it. Post it. Text it. Shout it. Write it on a sign, start a petition about it, argue on a bus, lose some fake friends on facebook over it, put it in a local paper. People respect those who don't bend to popular opinions. They might not like you, they might get offended or offensive but really - they wish they could do the same. This year, speak up when you feel strongly about something. 

Well, unless you're into murdering people or dislike babies, than maybe keep it to yourself...

Know what you can't do.

Whether it's care work or call centre work or dealing with smelly winter time bus population every day for three months, make and keep in your head a list of things that you just could not force yourself to do or that would make you very unhappy if you had to do them. It's very useful for work related choices - steers you clear from jobs in which you would last a month before trying to jump out of the window, screaming in gibberish.

If the list of what you can't and won't do is much, much longer than what you can and want to do in your life, you're either a very specialised genius or have severe mental health issues - seek help. 

Planning stuff is good, doing stuff is better.

We all have these bits of paper with the whole rest of our lives or at least next year planned out. Dusty, torn and forgotten within a few weeks. Useless. Will you pass the next work related opportunity because it came two months before you were expecting it? Will you say no just because you were not expecting to hear the question? Will you stick to the sacred Plan and watch your life pass you by? This year, grab the opportunities, say yes, welcome the unexpected. It is so much better.

Just don't crawl back to me after you jumped off the Forth Road bridge in a heat of the moment, that wasn't embracing the do without much thinking mentality, that was just stupid.

Don't be too hard on yourself.

Others will do it for you, they will say what you can't do and how you won't succeed and what will go wrong if you make the choices you want to make. Let them speak and then go home,  close the door and tell yourself that where you are is where you want to be and that who you are is - awesome.

If others follow you home, beat them with a stick.

Smile.

Or not.

Happy, fulfilling, productive, lazy, intriguing New Year to all of you who read all the way to the end!

To the ones who just skipped to the last sentence - at least do me a decency of reading the post backwards in segments, aloud, in Yoda's voice. Thank you.