For Earnestness

I think I come across as someone who is above New Year’s resolutions. I never have resolutions to tell people come January 1, and I nod along when they tell me the percentage that fail by February and how it’s a silly tradition anyway, and we pat each other on the backs for being the sorts who could change at any time of year (if we wanted to). As it happens, I’m so often resolutionless on 1/1 because of procrastination rather than cynicism. The New Year sneaks up on me every December.

I’m actually pretty dismissive of the concept of “just changing” any old time, and I know most people agree with me in their heart of hearts, but I don’t fault them for it. You could also dress up and ask strangers for candy any old day, but you don’t. There are some things that are best done at the same time as everyone else (even and especially if it’s an arbitrary time!) (It’s even more of a pity to hear people eschew New Years because it’s the odd holiday that’s strictly for people old enough to tell time). That’s not even to mention the psychological effect of a round number. Everyone knows that after a break, you have to wait for the top of the hour to start working again. There’s a certain clemency to a fresh calendar.

The only other date that can compare is a birthday, when everyone is receptive to your 24 year-old self being completely different from your 23 year-old self. Luckily, I have a late January birthday, so from the moment Auld Lang Syne catches me off-guard, I have a whole month to workshop “birthday resolutions”. (Frankly, I pity those born in other months). Every year, I can pick a few resolutions to stick to and surreptitiously discard the rest as “weird things I tried during January”.

The issue people have here comes from a lack of earnestness. Where I’m defining “earnestness” (possibly nonstandardly. This is the word I’ve been using in my head for this and I’m sticking with it.) to be something like: sincerely representing values or preferences. Think like a binary version of conviction. If conviction is how strongly you back your stances, earnestness is whether you back them at all or appear apathetic or otherwise dissemble.

If you have some preference which someone disagrees with, you have a few methods of recourse. You can change your preference or how much you value it or you can change how much you care what that person thinks of you (or just agree not to talk about it with that person). If you’ve somehow found yourself in the undesirable position of trying to make yourself universally likeable and must preempt any theoretical objection to your preferences, you have only one option. Since you’ve already committed to caring what some amorphous Other thinks, you can pretend that any opinion you express is ironic and not an accurate representation of your true self.

When I was thinking about starting this blog, I would read lots of other people’s blogs. I searched classmates and friends blogs and was always very impressed and a little intimidated. (Still, when people ask me about this site, I’m always tempted to diminish it. “Oh that? That’s just where I put stupid, non-serious rough drafts.”) I probably never would have actually started this if I had not come across a blog (which someone at an EA event had linked in their Zoom name) which was, generously, being held together by earnestness. I can’t find it because the only post I remember, “Create More Than You Consume”, as nonsensical and harebrained as I found it, is apparently a very common phrase in certain circles.

Like musical theater, there’s not really a way to do resolutions ironically. Resolutions reveal not just who you are but who you want to be. If you’re not earnest, you just have to skip them and deride those who make them.

(There may also be an element of conceptual inflation to resolutions. People who have read about the efficacy of resolutions want to separate themselves from those who make resolutions. In that case, I am pulling the exact same move in the opposite direction.)