Another three hundred and sixty-five and a fraction days of accumulated regrets, failures, mistakes and missed shots is complete, guys. You are older, weaker, more decrepit, more scarred and jaded. You are less attractive, bitterer, worse for wear in most ways. And yet you feel the need to celebrate this. Because, as the great observer of human nature said, “hope”. Hope. It’s always there to make us think maybe this time we will defeat precedent and common sense. Maybe this time we will be better. But the secret to happiness is to disregard hope and her false promises and to listen instead to the firm, stolid voice of pessimism. The secret to a better year is lowered expectations. With this established, let’s update, or rather downgrade our resolutions for 2020. Quit drinking? No, let’s not do that. Alcohol exists for a reason and all reasonable people know that and act accordingly. Don’t quit drinking. Just resolve to drink properly. That means whiskey must be drunk from a whiskey tumbler. This January, make a commitment to your bartender, or your supermarket aisle, or the random miscellaneous persons who send drinks to your table at the club in the hope of having a better chance at later sending you break-up texts after they realise that it isn’t working, that a relationship that started in a bar never works, that maybe they should have had some morals and gone to church instead of trawling the bar strip… sorry. My sentences sometimes get away from me. Where were we? Yes. No matter where you are getting your alcohol from, drink it properly. If you get whiskey, drink it from a whiskey tumbler. If you are getting wine, drink it from a wine glass. If you are drinking local brew, do the right thing and use a calabash. Never drink hard liquor straight from the bottle ever again. This won’t make your life better. You will still end up with 52 Saturdays of regrets at this time in 2021, but at least you will have done it with some class. Unless it is beer. Beer gives you the option to either use a beer mug or go straight for the mouth-to-mouth intoxication. Get in shape This is a popular New Year’s resolution, especially among the owners of gyms who enjoy collecting membership fees while fully knowing that they are not going to see the members for eleven of the twelve months they have paid for. Personally, I don’t see why we are so anxious that we keep making this resolution to ngu “get into shape”. Round is a shape. Oblong is a shape. Straight is a shape. What are you talking about? That is not a question. The only valid reasons to resolve to go to the gym are to protect your health if it is in jeopardy, or if you have already paid the money because you read this article too late and that the next point is to stop wasting money you already spent. So, we can’t expect you to self-motivate into the pain and struggle of weightlifting and fake-running — you need an external impetus. For that reason, I am going to advise that you get a gym crush. A gym crush is a person who is very attractive but is just a little bit out of your league, just a little bit out of your reach. Not Kate Bashabe, someone you could conceivably lie to yourself that you would have a shot with if you weren’t so fat or so skinny. So let their indifference to your existence torture you, let their apathy consume you with self-loathing, let it burn your soul every time they call you “brother” or “sister” until it reaches past the laziness and gets to the anger underneath, that level of psychological slime where all the evil things languish — greed and vanity and hatred and despair — then let it ignite a fire there. Say to yourself, “How dare she or he not adore me as much as I adore her or him! How dare this be! I will show him or her. I will triumph over this pronoun, whatever it is!” Then go to the gym and lift those weights as if you are trying to fling them through the roof. Run that treadmill as if you are trying to beat it in a race. Sit on that Yoga mat until it begs you to move your bum off forever. Then, when you are sexy, be cool. Become a decent human being again. Let go of the negative energy and go back to your wife or husband. When you are sexy, suddenly remember that you didn’t actually do this because you wanted Crush, you did it because I don’t want you to waste the money you already paid for the membership. Leave Crush alone. She doesn’t love you. Go back to your wife. Your wife loves you. She loved you when you were flabby, she loved you when you were making the household broke by throwing money at gyms, she stood by you. She deserves a sexy husband. Take your new abs to her. Give her a hot hubby for 2020. Which brings us to: Stop wasting money. This means all those impulse purchases you made in 2019, 2018, 2017 all the way to the days of cowrie shells. If you made the dumb mistake, for example, of buying a smartwatch, the way to prevent it from being a waste of money is to actually use it. Wear the stupid thing, fam. Wear them every day. Every time you realise that you could easily just use the phone to answer calls, check the weather, follow me on Twitter and read my small hilarities, or find out the time, do not use the phone. Squint your big eyes and force them to squeeze their retinas and corneas towards the ridiculously tiny smartwatch screen. Leave the phone in the car and suffer from that stupid thing you spent money on. That’s the only way to learn your lesson And if you bought Yeezy sneakers, wear them to official functions and take your embarrassment like a grown-up takes responsibility for their actions. Finally, in a related move, you are going to resolve to save money. The best way to do this is to not have a choice in the matter. I am going to suggest that you buy a Hummer. Sell your functional sensible car, computer, and other reasonable-person assets and buy a Hummer. If I am right about you, based on the demographic breakdown my research department has provided, you will not have enough money left to drive the thing. You won’t be able to afford to fuel it because those things drink petrol like the earth is running out of it or something. You won’t be able to service it, because even the minutest Hummer auto part replacement costs an arm and a leg, which explains why it is mostly human traffickers who drive them, and you will be forced to use public transport or walk around instead of driving. Meanwhile, the Hummer will remain parked, unused, unbothered, in your garage. And so in 2021, when you decide to sell it and have done with the bother, voila, not only will you have saved a year’s worth of fuel money in an era of rising petroleum prices, you will also have saved a year’s worth of insurance settlements for knocking people all over the streets from driving the way jerks in Hummers drive. I am going to leave you now because I have a word limit. But before I do, let me leave you with one serious, non-joking, for real resolution you should make this year, and every year. Don’t drink and drive and don’t let your friends do that either. Love you Rwanda! Happy New Year!
