The middle of winter isn't the best time for the traditional New Years Resolutions. It's not really a bad idea, yearly promises to oneself, it does force you into some clarifying (if delusional) self-assessments. I suppose some might suggest that such annual resolutions are arbitrary and will only cause you bitter self-reproach when they inevitably fail and are completely forgotten by February, and that the mature thing to do is to remain hyperaware of all your shameful personal failings at every moment year-round, the victim and perpetrator of a nonstop litany of inward-directed denunciation that knows no season and is constantly renewed with fresh material like an eternal hotsprings of self-recrimination fed by cruel and scalding underground sources that may cleanse the pores but are nonetheless scalding and cruel. That's a great idea, I wonder why it hasn't caught on.

It's preferable to live the vast majority of the year in blissful denial about your shortcomings, at least that gives you a theoretical chance at happiness and a few good nights' sleep. Denial allows you to have confidence; confidence makes you sexy. Self-aware people know too much about themselves, or think they do, and anyone who knows a lot about himself necessarily knows many ugly things. Painful self-knowledge is not sexy. The many-ugly-things-I-know-about-myself look was never a hot look, not even back east in the grim depressing states.

So then you can take stock at the end of the year, make your list of dozens of areas that need improvement, and start fresh. My only complaint is that you're supposed to start fresh in January. Struggling in the doldrums of a cold dead winter, one shouldn't be pressured toward any resolution stronger than a pledge to merely stay alive until spring. Let's switch New Years to April. That way when the flowers begin to bloom and the birds begin to sing our resolutions will seem a natural rebirth, part of nature's annual transformation. And there's something satisfying, in a cosmic joke sort of way, in having New Years and April Fools on the same day. I, of course, suffering as I do from debilitating pollen allergies, must unfortunately recuse myself from any such springtime activities and remain indoors with my denial.