Supplied - Magnus ManskeEvery year, we here at The Gateway hear the same promises students make to themselves about getting fit or eating healthy or getting better grades. Yet we keep hearing those same resolutions every year, so clearly they’re not sticking.
Well dear reader, if you’ve pledged yourself to being a cliché and achieving one of these four typical resolutions, our writers have just the tips for you on new ways of righting old wrongs and succeeded where the past has consistently failed.
Kate Black
As I rang in the New Year this year, as I have every year, with one hand down a Cool Ranch Doritos bag and the other cleaning Cheetos dust out of my bra, I decided it’s time for a change. It’s time to start eating healthier. But that’s really hard — I’m a woman of my own ways and sodium makes me feel alive.
I’ve realized, however, that a super easy way to start eating healthier is by becoming a horse.
Horses can live bountiful, healthy lives on a simple diet of grains and hay, and if they really feel like treating themselves they usually go for, like, grass or apples. Unhealthy foods can be poisonous to horses because their herbivore digestive tracts can’t handle large amounts of protein and fats. Horses also shouldn’t eat things like burgers, because that’s super messed up.
Also, if I was a horse, I would probably run really fast, everywhere, all the time. Then, hypothetically, if I actually ate like shit and was a horse, it wouldn’t even matter because I would be running really fast all the time and just burning off all of that shitty food that also might be poisonous.
So yeah, if you’re trying to eat healthier and/or lose weight in 2015, I’d definitely recommend becoming a horse. You’d have long, muscular legs and would finally be able to achieve your fitness goals.
Josh Greschner
Take a group of new gym-goers. One of these days early in the year, they’ll all be on their exercise bikes. All the bikes will be wired to a light bulb in the middle of the room and an envelope will be beside it, but no one will really think anything of it. They’ll be pedalling merrily along, imagining the calories melt and then the lights in the room will suddenly shut off. Screaming will ensue. Then suddenly, on all the TV screens, a weird doll like the one in Saw will appear.
In its deep, twisted voice, it’ll say “There is a bomb in this gym that will go off in 30 seconds.” Screaming will ensue.
“Unless you generate enough electricity on the pedal bikes to keep that light bulb on.”
Everyone will get on their bikes and pedal like hell. For hours. They’ll get the workout of their lives. They’ll all look back, and the light bulb will still be on.
The screen with the doll will flash again, and it’ll say. “One of you must get off your bike, get the envelope and pull whatever’s inside up to the light.” No one will volunteer. A scuffle will ensue. Half the gym-goers will pedal on their bikes, while others drag some poor dude toward the light and the envelope. They’ll beat him up a bit, he’ll start crying.
They’ll finally force him. He’ll go to the envelope, snot running down his nose. He’ll hold the envelope to the light bulb but he won’t be able to see anything inside. He’ll rip it open, reach in and pull out gym memberships for everyone. The lights will turn on and ripped males in yellow tank tops will burst into the room, laughing, jumping, high-fiving each other, doing cartwheels.
I used to work at Gold’s. They pull shit like this all the time.
Andrew Jeffrey
Around this time of year, every year, many of us are all thinking the same thing, about how big of a piece of shit we are. Our many flaws suddenly become abundantly clear as we celebrate the dawning of a new year with guilt, scorn and self-doubt.
A lot of us will want to improve ourselves and find more enjoyment in life. Some others will want to volunteer more and give more often to charity. So, why not do both?
Well, inevitably, you’ll start donating less to charity and find less and less time to volunteer. But that doesn’t mean you have to give yourself yet another reason to think you’re a failure. There’s a way you can still give back to charities while improving yourself.
You see, if you have low enough self-esteem, then spending money on yourself is like giving to the less fortunate. If you’re starting to think you can’t fend for yourself, volunteer your precious time to buying amenities to make life easier on yourself. Stop putting money towards people who, for all you know, may not even find the same pleasure in buying expensive things like you know you will. Your only sure bet in achieving these resolutions is to spend more time on yourself.
This new year, you should do you and make yourself feel better about all that you have in your life before 2016 rolls around. And what better way to appreciate all that you have than by having more things. It’s brilliant.
Make a wish come true this year, and hey, why not just cut out any ideas of giving back to anyone else, and make that wish your own. After all, it’s either fail in looking out for others or succeed in taking care of number one. The choice seems clear.
Kevin Schenk
Oh, so you’re going to check Facebook less? Resolve to stop checking Twitter every few minutes? Maybe post only one selfie on Instagram per day instead of one per hour? Good for you! Now it’s time to realize that nobody cares and you’re going to fail anyway.
Why are you giving up social media anyway? If anything, you should be going on it more. If it wasn’t good for us, we wouldn’t want to be connected all the time. That’s why the big trend right now in tech is to make smartwatches; we don’t even want to go through the hassle of taking our phones out of our pockets.
It’s not like you’re giving up excitement in your life by tweeting less. If you did, you wouldn’t have anything to tweet about anyways. Come back to me with a real resolution. You can show it to me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr or Google+. Just kidding, nobody uses Google+.
