Linda Hamilton, in this week’s ‘Your Mental Health’ column comprehensively covers some common sense approaches to so-called New Year’s Resolutions.

In essence (though Linda puts it better than this): don’t be comparing yourself to others, and January is just another month.

However, we disagree slightly with Linda’s second point, as on this page we believe January is the perfect month to try, and fail, new things.

We’re all poor, cold, and a bit bored.

We’re tired of social obligations, fed up of overeating, and jaded from drinking.

The days get longer too, the sun seems brighter, and things feel clean and new when the decorations are put away.

Sparse, perhaps, but like a blank canvas.

For January, you could take up running: it’s great, so the masochists say. First you’re too cold, then a short time later you’re too hot. You don’t have the right shoes (why would you; you’ve never done it before), your shins hurt, and now you’re a mile away from home and sweaty and thirsty. Your headphones fall out of your ears, or else you haven’t charged them so now you’re a mile away from home, thirsty, sweaty, and left alone with your own thoughts and sore shins. Don’t come after us, you know this is a true and accurate experience for dozens of people across the country, each and every January. 

Alternatively, if you’re a water-based masochist, you could take up seaswimming.

Then you’d be miles from home, but only about 50 metres from your car which is helpful when you are genuinely face-to-face with God from the cold. Seaswimming in Ireland, in the winter, is the surest proof we have that the Irish need Catholicism in their life. It’s not enough to have the sea, it’s not enough to look at it, or hear it, or see it; we must suffer in it. Of course seaswimming makes you feel alive, your mind and body have never come so willingly close to death’s cold grasp. 

These attempts and failures are why January is the ideal time of the year to try and fail new things. No one is watching you, and the temporary madness will be forgotten by next January. 

As Linda points out, our goals are doomed to fail when they are done only for external validation. Health apps are the pinnacle of this weird, foreign monitoring of our own goals. Google says well done for reaching 10,000 steps; but what is Fitbit’s right to be proud or disappointed in us? That is our right alone, and one we choose to accept from other people if we want to. It might be nice to get a ‘well done’ from your boss, but it means nothing compared to the ‘well done’ we give ourselves. By granting Fitbit and its ilk the authority to make us feel good, or bad, about what we did on a Tuesday in January is absurd.

The big changes we make take time and discipline to become habit and become part of ourselves. These changes could be something tangible, like quitting smoking, or it could be quiet and private, like developing the courage to be happy alone. In either case, we are the masters of our fate. You can pretend to quit smoking but obviously, you’re only fooling yourself. You can protest that you’re grand alone and smile and laugh for the audience, but if it’s all a façade then you’re only damaging yourself: it’s fallen out of popularity to admit it but sometimes, you are the only one that matters. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. But fail for yourself only, not for other people.