Resolutions, schmresolutions?
Many years ago, before my teaching days (and before I had even planned on becoming a teacher), I worked at Waterstone’s bookshop in Belfast in the run-up to the Christmas period (and I was sorely tempted to stay on permanently – that might have been the best job I’ve ever had and my not-so-secret dream is still to run my own bookshop one day, but alas…). After the Christmas holidays I remember having to put out books for the section entitled ‘New Year, New You!’ These books were downright appalling in terms of cringeworthiness: your usual mélange of self-help gurus proffering up advice about positive thinking, happiness, getting into shape, eating more healthily, acupuncture, meditation, the Kama Sutra, being a calmer person, not kicking puppies, etc, etc. In some ways I’ve mellowed out over the years and in others I’m just as much of a grouch as I always have been. But I’ve never really liked the idea of your more standard run-of-the-mill resolutions, the kind that everyone says ...