Happy New Year(ning)

Traditionally the 6th of January is considered the last of the “twelve days of Christmas”, but nowadays it is common that by that date most of us have forgotten about matters related to the Christmas time, which commercially at least, started on Black Friday, or even the day after Halloween. By January 7th (and even later) it’s still acceptable to be wishing each other a “Happy New Year”, but when we did so to a friend this year, he commented that “so far it’s a great year - one week in, I haven’t had time yet to screw it up”. We are not sure whether he was pessimistically

predicting his inevitable failure, or optimistically rejoicing for it not having occurred yet. It turned out that our friend had made a New Year’s resolution this year which entailed NOT making any resolution similar to the ones in which he had not succeeded in previous years. A little weird, you think? Not really - when you don’t fully trust yourself to keep up a resolution, you might as well resolve to work on postponing the breaking of it. People have been known to make much weirder resolutions - like the couple in Florida who (four years ago!) made the resolution to “Smarter with Procrastination”. Like so many people that started something new in January 2020, they too were soon stuck in the Covid frenzy. But unlike so many others, this couple never wavered from their goals, as we have found recent evidence of their progress (see poster from January 2020 - it’s still up).

Quite a few years ago, people started to realize that a great many of the new year resolutions only last for a few days or weeks, which led to the name “Quitter’s Friday” being applied to the second Friday of January. It is the Spuzzum Institute of Technology associates, who - through painstaking research - have discovered that those quitters, who are in the dumps in mid January, tend to stay there for over two months, i.e. till late March or early April, before they experience again a Good Friday. Interestingly we learn from American statistics that in the USA only 13% of new year’s resolutions last till Easter or beyond. Because our southern neighbours keep statistics for just about everything, they also show us where in the USA people are best and where worst for sticking to resolutions - note that for several years now Seattle WA has been rated #1 city for keeping resolutions, and New Jersey is in last place. Could that mean that those devils do not want a new jersey for the new year?

Our very best wishes for 2024

and as for those broken resolutions, we hope you may only

experience failures that are small enough to

NOT INDUCE AN IDENTITY CRISIS

Instead of resolutions, the Spuzzum Institute offers

New Year’s Advice

that can be used on any day that ends with a Y.

--- Only make new year’s resolutions you can actually keep.

--- Let your worries last shorter than your resolutions.

--- Never let a broken resolution break up a friendship.

--- Always remember you can refill a half-empty glass.

--- The best kept resolution is not to be kept back by them.

--- Don’t wait till tomorrow to find out what you could be doing today.

--- Don’t do today what you can make somebody else do tomorrow.

--- Resolutions are not for the weak-hearted - it takes guts to break them.

--- There’ll be little remorse over breaking a resolution if you had called it a casual intention.

--- Cheer up, things could be worse. And when you do cheer up, they probably will.

--- Be merry - every day after New Year’s day gets you closer to Christmas.

--- Be brief - sticking to a daily resolution is much easier than to a year-long one.

--- Be resolved to never take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night!

Various polling projects have brought to light that, whilst some people come up with the strangest resolutions, the vast majority of them are related to matters of family and life-style. Resolution review - like in previous years - shows how people in North America yearn for change mostly in three areas, which in order of popularity are: (1) Physical Fitness - in January each year numerous people start or restart going to a gym; (2) Lose Weight - mostly a reaction to the stuffing with turkeys, ham etcetera; (3) Improve Finances - following the over-spending of the previous weeks, this can be as a plan to save money or a way to manage one’s inflated credit card balance. The anxieties brought on by all three, but especially by #3, have led to the third Monday of January become known as Blue Monday which - you guessed it - may well be the fall-out from the commercial events of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day (and all the days in between). And that mood of depression has been evident more so this year, because of notable cost-of-living increases we’ve had to contend with last year.

Many suggestions have been made by various professionals on how to prevent and overcome Blue Monday depression, but the one thing they all agree on is the most effective: Do a Good Thing for Some Other Person - you’ll get a joyful satisfaction in return.

And surely it doesn’t take a bible-punching farmer to tell you it is based on the principle: You Reap What You Sow.

Therefore it is our new year’s resolution to keep on sowing every day all the way to 2025 -

feel free jo join us, we can sow - and harvest - together.

Enjoy