Ah yes. It’s the two months of the year that people ask each other for their new year’s resolutions. The first thing I wonder is if they’re actually interested in other people’s goals or if they’re looking for inspiration. As expected, I’ve asked this question here and there, and most responses have unsurprisingly been generic. “I want to lose weight,” “I want to exercise more,” “I want to read more.” I want to do all three! 

Who said what

Now that you know someone else’s resolution, the conversation topic dies down naturally. It gets washed away with all the other words in the chit-chat. Perhaps someone would inquire about it in a few months. I doubt it, though. I can barely remember my own resolutions by springtime.

I read somewhere that New Years Resolutions have to be well-scoped to be effective. I liked that idea and tried to find out if my friends had resolutions like that. Nope. That led me to wonder if most people sat down and took the time to make resolutions. Were they saying common themes that they’ve always wanted to do? Were they even serious about it? A fun activity would be to guess if people follow through on their resolutions. But that would take effort. Effort; I barely had that for my goals.

Post-graduation goals

That being said, it is nice to talk with people who have taken the time to think about New Year’s resolutions. It has been a refreshing way to see what things I want to improve on in the future. Since most of my friends just graduated, we have all been blessed with free time. They have fewer responsibilities outside of work, so they are more interested in doing more of something. Music appears here and there, but it doesn’t look that promising given that most of my friends started working in August and haven’t done anything yet. In a way, we all have more time yet somehow feel comfortable spending less time on hobbies.

For what it’s worth, my goal was to reduce the amount of media consumption I spend per week and instead devote that time to the arts. Some of my inspiration came from a friend who started playing piano again. My goal is to watch around 20 minutes of YouTube a day on my phone (however, it can be unlimited on the laptop) and do 10 pushups every time I die when playing video games. I’ve already failed at keeping the goal. However, I hope I can achieve this commitment by year-end.