{"id":59,"date":"2024-12-31T11:11:43","date_gmt":"2024-12-31T11:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/?p=59"},"modified":"2024-12-31T11:14:45","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T11:14:45","slug":"bloody-january-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/2024\/12\/31\/bloody-january-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Bloody January again\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Screenshot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Oh, look – December 26th arrives, and blammo! – the inevitable television advertisements pop up, attempting to sucker people into buying into the \u201cNew Year, New Me\u201d school of thought by banking on the fact that everyone\u2019s feeling like ten pounds of shit in a two-pound bag after seasonal over-indulgence. It\u2019s quite interesting, though rather contemptible, that the way they do this shows exactly what view they have of the sexes and what they best respond to when you want to manipulate them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Targeting women: \u201cLosing weight is really hard because you can\u2019t have any cake, and we\u2019ve all had enough of being judged, haven\u2019t we, girls? Take our pills.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Targeting men: \u201cYou look like a twat, and people laugh at you. Join our gym.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, meh. I guess it\u2019s something to do with the first couple of weeks of your January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I\u2019m coming over as a cynical old curmudgeon, then I do beg your ever-so-pardon. But realistically, nearly all New Year\u2019s resolutions mean absolutely butt-fuck nothing, and you know that as well as I do. If they meant anything to the people making them, they wouldn\u2019t need whatever psychological leg-up the first day of January adds to the mix, because they\u2019d already have started making the changes they need to make. It could be that the limbo period preceding that date – slobbed out flatulently on the sofa feeling like a hung-over hippopotamus, mechanically conveying half a tub of Quality Street chocolates into your gob – confronts you with the realisation that something\u00a0<\/em>needs to change. But a calendar date is a funny sort of place to hammer in your first piton for your ascent, given that everything will very soon afterwards revert back to the same dismal conditions under which you bumbled into your present intolerable position in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve long considered New Year\u2019s resolutions kids\u2019 stuff. The meaning of this changes over time, of course. When you\u2019re a child, your resolutions tend to be things your parents think are a good idea (\u201cHave you made any New Year\u2019s resolutions, Hector?\u201d, followed by being given pointed helpful hints whether you have or not.) So you end up with \u201cI will keep my bedroom tidy this year\u201d or \u201cI will work harder at school\u201d. They\u2019re not things you\u2019re personally invested in – they\u2019re just things your parents want you to do, using the fact that it\u2019s January 1st in an attempt to make you feel you ought actually to do them this time – so your efforts in their direction rarely even reach a \u201chalf-hearted\u201d level. Then, for those still bothering with the concept as adults with no parents breathing down their necks – and once you\u2019ve weeded out the wafty New Age-y ones you see posted on Facebook with a rainbow in the background, like \u201c2025 is my year for embracing change\u201d, which is more or less code for \u201c2025 is my year for attempting to be at peace with the fact that I have given up\u201d – you tend to get the grown-up equivalent of something an oversugared child with no brakes might come up with: \u201cThis year I will dump Useless Simon, go travelling in Bali and find myself, and meet a man who deserves me!!!\u201d (Yeah, of course you will, Dorothy.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And me? I\u2019ve got weight to lose. I\u2019m not talking about weight in the physical sense here (although you can look at the photographs of me illustrating a couple of posts in this blog and decide for yourself whether or not you agree) but psychological weight; the compacted sludge of feelings of fear, grief and hopelessness that come for me in my sleepless hours, when there are no distractions to drown them out. I can\u2019t pretend, least of all to myself, that I can sling it all aside, turn my back on it and ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay my triumphant way into the New Year just because the calendar resets; if I could do that, I wouldn\u2019t have a problem to start with. I can look at it, explore it, maybe chip away at it with whatever tools and strength I can find; sometimes all I can do is sit with it, and when that\u2019s so, that\u2019s what will have to suffice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s part of what this blog is for. I find it easier to articulate my thoughts in writing than in speech, and it works too with the analytical side of my brain, because to write about what I\u2019m going through I need to dissect it and work out what\u2019s going on with it first. In a way, it\u2019s through the process of writing about my thoughts that I learn for myself what they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not a glamorous, Instagram-friendly process, and it comes with no show of a \u201cjourney\u201d painstakingly curated to make me look marvellous, or any intention of its winning me praise or \u201cfollowers\u201d; it\u2019s about going within myself, for myself. But you can watch if you like, though you\u2019ll have to bring your own pop-corn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh, look – December 26th arrives, and blammo! – the inevitable television advertisements pop up, attempting to sucker people into buying into the \u201cNew Year, New Me\u201d school of thought by banking on the fact that everyone\u2019s feeling like ten pounds of shit in a two-pound bag after seasonal over-indulgence. It\u2019s quite interesting, though rather […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}