New Years Public Service Announcement

A new leaf! A new year! A new diary! Woot! How exciting. We can reinvent ourselves! 

Except, unfortunately, it’s usually only two weeks into the new year before most of us are sneak-watching terrible television, eating leftover Christmas chocolates we found in a suitcase we still haven’t properly unpacked, and failing to put the bins out. 

Look. You’re going to hear a lot of self-improvement mumbo jumbo from people at the start of 2017. But not here. Oh no. This is a public service announcement. The following is going to happen in 2017 whether you like it or not. Get your expectation levels out of those clouds. This, right here, is reality.

At some stage in 2017 you are going to hear, but not be able to see, a mosquito. Probably in your bedroom. At best this means less sleep. At worst it means you will be eaten alive while slapping yourself in your own face.

An inanimate object in 2017 is going to make you shout, mutter or think “oh come ON!” and there’s nothing you can do about it.

An idiot, in 2017, will try and make you feel like an idiot. This is what idiots do. Which idiot will do this to you? When? For how long? There really is no way of telling. Brace yourself.

There is no way 2017 will not contain Eddie McGuire. Sorry. Deal with it.

Someone will, over the next twelve months, use your name excessively despite having just learned it. For example, “if I can just stop you there, Samantha” or “I appreciate your concern Samantha”, or “Can I suggest you pop over to our website Samantha?” while you attempt through gritted teeth to explain for the basmillionth time that your power has gone out/phone isn’t working/car has exploded/face has melted off etc.

Chances are that at some point you will accidentally inhale that bus exhaust that smells kind of like banana.

At some stage this year, a human adult will describe something as ‘impactful’. Deliberately.

Thirteen minutes into registering for tickets to something or, worse, trying to pay for some dumb thing that costs too much money, a website will stop working and you will have to go back to the beginning and re-enter absolutely everything and yet nobody will go to jail for this.

There will be, at some point in 2017, a gap between the You that you plan to be, and the You that you always end up being. It may become apparent, for instance, in one of the following circumstances:

• a)    Grocery shopping. Planning You, who does the grocery shopping, will probably dash the hopes of Real You, who will search through your shopping bags later for any hidden treats that Planning You might have stashed away for Real You to pig out on while watching something terrible on Netflix which Previous You did not put in your wish list and which Future You will probably lie about.
• b)    Buying home goods. Planning You sees furniture in the shop where everything matches and thinks “this will be me! I will become minimalist! I will be like that Japanese woman who sells people books about how they don’t need things or that woman who only owns a passport in a safe in Berlin and travels the world with the money she saves from not buy matching stools with names that sound like Nordic swearwords. This is it! I start minimizing today. This foldaway desk slash table will cure me of my desire to buy fifties salt and pepper shakers at garage sales and I will be free of clutter forever, a calm floating cloud in the blue sky of life.” But Future You will soon be Actual You, trying to put together a foldaway desk slash table with an alan key that you cannot find but was here literally thirty seconds ago. 
• c)    Oh, Getting Ready for The Party You, what a lovely, hopeful, attractive if somewhat nervy sweetheart. After Party You, though, is a regretful, moody, probably hungover shell of a human being whose favourite place in the world is face first against the tiles of the shower wall. 

There, you see? This is how we should start the year. Honest. Realistic. Away with new year’s resolutions, top ten ways to shed post-Christmas pounds and the most exciting films to be released in 2017. No. You are not Future You. You are you. Go and be you for heaven’s sake. You’re actually really good at it.

I write this column for The Big Issue. They're marvellous. Support them if you can.