Good luck canceling your gym membership
By ANGIE VELARDE — avelarde@ucdavis.edu
New Year’s resolutions — most of us make them; nobody you know has actually kept one. Here are seven resolutions I know you’ve given up on already:
- Going to the gym
Let’s be honest: if this was not already part of your long-standing routine, it’s probably never going to be. Maybe it’s the fact that working out in most gyms evokes the same feeling of being half-naked and vulnerable in the middle of a Target the week before Christmas. Maybe it’s because the ARC is located at the farthest corner of campus, and walking there twice was already more exercise than you did in the entire month of December. Either way, it’s probably fair to say that your new workout clothes will be gathering mothballs for the next 11 months.
- Drinking more water
You bought a water bottle that sends an alert to your phone when you haven’t picked it up recently. You finally bought a replacement filter for the Brita you purchased a year ago. But then the phone alerts started to blend into the background. Seems like remembering to fill your water bottle every morning before you left the house was a little too much to expect of your future self.
- Eating healthier
You were prepared this time. You bought food prep containers and stocked up your pantry. Your fridge was filled with something other than half a can of chili and a jar of mayonnaise. But now it’s full of slimy containers of old salad and your freezer is overflowing with frozen burritos. All is normal in the world again.
- Learning to knit
Nope.
- Drinking less caffeine
You bought replacement beverages. Your cabinet is now full of herbal tea, and you were using your dusty kettle every day for a whole week. But the first couple of weeks of classes were a little more tiring than you anticipated. Now, you’re sitting in the corner of your room shame-chugging energy drinks and trying to finish the reading for your physics class before lecture tomorrow. It was a good idea, in theory.
- Deleting your food delivery apps
The plan was practical. You’d save a lot of money. Probably eat a little better. But then you realized that cooking takes time, and so does grocery shopping, and let’s be honest: nothing you’ve ever cooked has ever been as good as a pizza from Woodstock’s. And then you thought to yourself, “Why should I deny myself the simple pleasures like a little burrito now and then or a gallon of Baja Blast?” Life is short. Order the panini.
- “The Resolution” resolution
You made a few. You decided to throw a handful at the wall to see which ones would stick. You heard that most resolutions are abandoned by the end of the first week of the new year, but your friend told you about a guy they knew who made a resolution to exercise and now he’s a professional athlete, so it gave you some hope. “Fine,” you thought, “maybe I won’t keep them all, but if I keep even one, it will be better than nothing.” But weeks went by (not that many, admittedly), and keeping track of which ones you had and had not already abandoned got too difficult. Don’t worry. You can always try again next year.
Written by: Angie Velarde — avelarde@ucdavis.edu
Disclaimer: (This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
