Readers: Right about now, you may be feeling bad about the resolutions you can already imagine yourself breaking about 17 hours into 2024. Sixteen if you get up early, open the freezer and someone left a pint of Talenti Bourbon Fudge Brownie.

Yet there’s no need to hate your ice-cream-addicted, never-get-ahead, willpower-of-a-gnat — who doesn’t exercise or, for that matter, read almost anything anymore — self. No indeed. 

That’s because a yearlong resolution is simply too hard. Duh. The trick is to clear your mind and resolve to spend just two hours on January 1 as the new you. That way it’s easy to succeed. 

Here’s how I did it. Distinctly I recall that as of 9:30 a.m., January 1, 2023, my day unfolded thusly, beginning by sternly telling myself: 

*I will not eat a second — non-ice-cream — breakfast, complete with extra buttery toast, with the excuse that “I get my best work done right after a satisfying breakfast.”

*Yet… buttery toast. Mmm…

*No, wait. I will eat better. I will welcome kale. 

*”Hi, Kale. This is the garbage can.”

*No, no, no. They say that after you do something for 30 days, it becomes a habit. So, if I can just spend the next two hours being good … that’s like 30 days, right? On Mercury?

*And then I’ll be trim and healthy and positive.

*Positive I need more butter-dripping toast.

*No. Positive about life. And health. And exercise. Like, I am positively GLAD I just joined the gym last year starting, um, let me check…

*I’ve been paying this stupid gym membership for an entire year? Even though that one time I went to check it out — December 29, 2022 — all I could see was a giant room filled with torture equipment and people gulping their water so orgasmically, it was like I’d landed in a Dasani commercial? Don’t they care about all their stupid plastic bottles and plastic bodies and plastic credit cards they maxed out paying for — 

*Okay. Deep breaths. Those joyous exercisers were not “them.” They are ME. This year, I will become one of them. Hello, hot yoga for beginners.

*Although … are there any actual yoga beginners left, besides me? I remember trying yoga once so long ago, it was before some cynical yogi came up with the idea of yoga mats — something you have to buy in order to do something that about a billion people do every day who live on lentils. Do you suppose they scrimp and save so that one glorious day, God willing, forget about replacing their near-dead goat, they can buy a yoga mat? 

*Or yoga pants? 

*Can you believe that stupid gym? Filled with sweaty hypocrites who can’t stop gulping water, wearing pants that cost more than a micro-loan that could give an entire village fresh goat milk every day? 

*No way am I going back there. I’ll just stand more. Standing is good for you, too. “Sitting is the new smoking.”

*Or maybe I just won’t start smoking. Or even vape. Because vaping is the new smoking, too. Or it was, till you couldn’t vape with that nice Tootsie Pop grape smell anymore. 

*And how come you never see a Tootsie Pop anymore? It’s like they got knocked off by the Reese’s gang. I mean, I like the Reese’s franchise, but give some other candy a break, guys. Not everything has to be filled with peanut butter.

*Resolve: I will not keep drifting off topic. I will concentrate on eating better, exercising more, and focusing on my toast.

*Work, I mean. Focusing on my work. Who’s obsessing about crunchy, buttery toast? Or crunchy peanut butter, for that matter? Not this gal. I’m dripping with resolve.

So… that’s basically how it went last year. Not perfect. Yet this year? It’s going to be SO different. 

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