Resolutions.

Life For years new years resolutions have been something other people break and so your writer has tended to avoid them. Already plagued by guilt for no particular reason, the last thing someone like me requires is something to actually feel guilty about. But 2019 feels different, the end of a decade, transitional. Since I'm unlikely to make any big life decisions any time soon, unless they're forced up on me, I've decided to make a list of items, of small things I'd like to do and create a set of rules which will help guide me there.

Some of them are frivolous. Some of them are about saving money. Some of them about about changing me. But it feels prudent to type them up here, in public, or as public as this blog is these days, so that there's less incentive for me not to follow them. Then at the close of the year, I can look back at them and see how many I was able to adhere to. The statements are pointedly self-centered and first person and probably has a tone closer to a manifesto or set of commandments. That can't be helped and neither can the fact you'll probably think me a lunatic. You'd be half right.

I want to be healthier and lose weight.

- No chocolate
- No sweets
- No biscuits
- No cake
- No bread
- No cheese
- In fact as little dairy as possible
- Eat more fruit and veg
- Eat smaller portions
- More exercise

[As it says. I've indulged a bit recently and for various reasons been snacking between meals. I do not want to re-consume the five stone lost during my pre-op crash diet in 2013 but equally I don't want to have another crash diet. I've tried but it just fucks with my anxiety. I'll take this gentler approach instead and see where it takes me.]

I want to be more respectful to food.

- No sauces or condiments unless they're integral to the dish.

[No gravy or cheese sauce or pickles or ketchup or horseradish or any of that.  As one chef said on social media the other day, I'm paraphrase and I don't remember who, there's nothing worse than cooking a beef burger to perfection, sourced using some of the best meat available and then having the customer smother it in cheap ketchup that kills the flavour.]

I want to keep my film collection static.

- Do not buy any new or second hand region 2/B dvds or blu-rays this year unless they're MCU, Doctor Who, Star Wars or Network releases or Shakespeare.

[Even after a clear out of off-air dvd-r recordings with what is now shocking picture quality, I still have a couple of thousand films in my collection and with the various streaming services and Cinema Paradiso, it's morally and financially untenable for me to keep adding to them which is all too tempting now the price of dvds has crashed in charity shops and at CEX.  The caveats are mostly obvious.  Network don't licence their films to CP so its worth grabbing them if they're cheap.  I'd also say that region one dvds are excluded, especially if its a film which hasn't been theatrically released here.  I'm trying to reduce the fodder.]

I want to reduce my Big Finish backlog to zero.

- Listen to Big Finish during the walk to and from work.

[All of those £2.99 digital purchases add up.  I'm also behind with the McGanns which is unforgivable.]

I want to keep my book collection static.

- No more new books unless they're Doctor Who TARGET novelisations or on audio.

[After having a sort out this afternoon, I now have about eighth shelves worth of books to read and precious little time to catch up on them.  So yes, cold turkey on buying the printed word.  TARGETs are excluded because I'm collecting them ready for a project.  Since I don't have enough time to sit down and read books too often, I'll try to listen to them instead.  Once I've caught up on Big Finish, I have all seventy-two hours of Stephen Fry narrating Sherlock Holmes to keep me busy.]

Embrace the whole of the Sugababes.

- Listen through the albums and re-appraise Sweet 7.

[After years of having a purists approach to the Sugababes, I was listening to About You Now from the Change album and realised that I've been rather foolish in demoting anything recorded after Siobhan left.  Although there'll be nothing to replace the sweet, soul sound of the original line up, every album after is filled with absolute bangers, and the group didn't reach number one until Freak Like Me anyway.  If you love something, you have to embrace all of it and so just as the Shalka Doctor is as valid as the Third, so Get Sexy should sit right along with Run For Cover.] 

If I think of anything else, I'll add them here.