Time to make your New Year's DISsolutions
Resolutions are so last year.
Introductory apology section
I just quickly wanted to thank everyone for the “get well soon” messages after my last email. It warmed my heart, even if it didn’t loosen my mucous. I still don’t quite feel normal yet — I am sorry — but I’m much better than I was last week.
I also want to send positive and protective Ryan Email Club vibes to any readers in the Los Angeles area right now. Stay safe!
-Ryan
Resolved to fail
It is early January, and just typing those first four words jolts me with a pure adrenaline shock of high-octane torpor. Actually, typing any words is in direct conflict with my current sense of being, which is best described as a sense that I more-or-less exist and I’m tired.
A lot of plants and animals choose dormancy through this season. I applaud their wisdom. If it were more couth for humans to sleep through the winter, I might try it for myself, but The Medical Establishment stigmatizes such behavior with tawdry labels like “major depressive episode.” How snooty and shortsighted of us to dismiss a natural adaptive strategy.
Even my dumb pet tortoise is instinctively accustomed to brumation. Some caretakers choose to lull their tortoises into a winter slumber, usually by stowing them in the fridge for a few months. (That’s not a joke.) I seriously contemplate giving Tután a similar treatment every year. As much as it would please me to make him go away all winter, something feels weird about shoving him in a shoebox next to my La Croix. No doubt I would forget I put him in there, then sometime in July a peckish houseguest would retrieve him from the back of the vegetable crisper and ask me, “Is this still good?”
All of this leads me to a point that I would’ve gotten to much faster in less bleary times: It confounds me when we reach the vast blandscape of January and everyone’s talking about New Year’s resolutions. I’m over here in a T-shirt I haven’t changed in 12 days chugging NyQuil while rewatching season 7 of The Simpsons for the 157th time, and these people are trying to better themselves? In January??
I admire the chutzpah of these grindset alphas. Maybe you’re one of them! If you do have New Year’s resolutions, please know that the Ryan Email Club is rooting for you. We can’t wait to see the inspiring results when we gather for the next Ryan Email Club Annual Retreat (date/location TBD).
But for my part, a great way to exacerbate my winter funk is by setting totally reasonable and achievable goals at the year’s outset and giving up on them before the end of the NFL playoffs. That’s when I go back into my NyQuil hole for six additional weeks of winter.
So, my perennial resolution has been resolving not to make resolutions. But what if there was another option? What if I could redefine failure as success?
That’s why this year, I’m doing New Year’s dissolutions. I’m abandoning the traditional call for self-improvement and replacing it with a personal commitment to dissolving any progress I’ve made in previous years.
Here are a few New Year’s dissolutions I’ve been considering, which hopefully spark inspiration:
Gain 150 pounds before summer.
Forget how to play guitar.
Start smoking.
Quit running.
Drink more.
Read fewer books.
Delete Duolingo off my phone and cease acknowledging Spanish as a language.
Stop cooking my own meals.
Eat more ultraprocessed foods.
Be more present on social media.
Volunteer to throw litter onto the streets.
Scare more children.
Read more of
by .Spend at least 10 hours a day looking at my phone.
Take up leaf blowing as a hobby.
Be a burden to my community.
Choose and commit to a New Year’s dissolution.
Unlike a resolution, a New Year’s dissolution is a win-win proposition. If you accomplish your goals, then you’ve accomplished your goals. But if you fail, then you’re probably better off.
Do you have a New Year’s dissolution you’d like to share? Send them to me, and in a couple months we’ll check in on our digression. It always helps to have a few accountabilibuddies.
Click Roulette
The below links match one of the two descriptions provided for each. Click at your own peril!
CLICK HERE FOR LINK ONE. This is either:
A press conference where the next leader of the free world threatens to antagonize, invade, and conquer longtime allies for basically no reason.
A cook perfectly flipping 24 pancakes one by one.
CLICK HERE FOR LINK TWO. This is either:
The polka version of “Virtual Insanity” by Jamiroquai.
The Bollywood version of “Thriller” by Michael Jackson.
CLICK HERE FOR LINK THREE. This is either:
A new podcast series that tries to connect Crocs footwear with a sinister conspiracy to make your feet so gay for each other.
Jimmy Stewart reading a touching poem about his dog Beau.
Tortoise pic of the week
Wordle hint (SPOILER)
If it’s yellow, it’ll spell-o. If it’s green, keep it keen. If you’re a genius, start with PENIS.
Eavesdrop of the week
“Yep, that’s a good one.”
— Seattle man wearing a Jamiroquai hoodie at a local bar, agreeing with a completely sloshed woman that “Virtual Insanity” is a good song, after patiently explaining to her that Jamiroquai is the name of a band, not a singer, which is honestly news to me
New Year’s dissolution : Stop flossing. This should be easy.
I read on social media that leaf blowing is the only man-made sound you can HEAR FROM SPACE