The Critic | The Resolution Delusion: Wh...

Can we just take a second to acknowledge the weird energy in the air right now? You feel it? It’s a mix of desperation, overpriced spandex, and the smell of fresh paper.

It’s January. The month of the Great Human Delusion.

I walked into a coffee shop this morning—and I swear to you, the vibe was different. Usually, people are just zombies trying to get caffeine into their bloodstream so they don't murder their boss. But today? Oh, today everyone looked... purposeful. They had that glint in their eye. They were typing aggressively on their laptops. They weren't just drinking coffee; they were fueling their destiny.

And I stood there, looking at the menu, and I thought: "Who are we kidding?"

Seriously, who are we trying to fool?

We treat January 1st like it’s a magical portal. Like it’s a car wash for your soul. You drive your dirty, beat-up, pizza-stained 2025 life into the tunnel on New Year’s Eve, the clock strikes midnight, soap goes everywhere, scrubbers hit the windshield, and—poof!—you drive out the other side as a shimmering, golden god of productivity who loves waking up at 4:30 AM.

It’s the Midnight Magic myth. And it is hilarious.

Think about the logic here. At 11:59 PM on December 31st, who were you? Be honest. You were probably on a couch. You were probably holding a beverage that is terrible for your liver. You were probably covered in cracker crumbs. You were a lazy, procrastinating, slightly rounder version of yourself. You were a mess.

Then, sixty seconds pass. The ball drops. Everyone screams. And suddenly... what? You think your DNA rearranged itself? You think the calendar flipped a switch in your brain that deletes thirty years of bad habits?

"11:59 PM: I am a lazy slob who watches six hours of TikToks about cats."

"12:00 AM: I am a Navy SEAL. I eat raw eggs. I run marathons before breakfast. Pain is weakness leaving the body!"

Get out of here! You are the same person! You just have a headache now!

But we buy into it. Man, do we buy into it. And because we buy into it, we have to buy the props.

That’s what this is really about. The props. We treat a fresh start like we’re set designers for a movie called "My Perfect Life." We think if we buy the right costumes and the right set pieces, the script will write itself.

I am guilty of this. Oh, I am the king of this. I am the CEO of "Buying Things Instead of Doing Things."

Let’s talk about the stationery.

I went to the bookstore the other day. Big mistake. Never go to a bookstore in January unless you want to see a bunch of adults having an existential crisis in the journal aisle.

I’m standing there, and I see it. The Notebook.

You know the one. It’s sitting on a pedestal. It’s wrapped in plastic. It’s got a band around it that says something fancy like "Premium GSM Archive Quality Paper." I don't know what GSM means, but it sounds expensive, so I want it.

This notebook was forty dollars. Forty. American. Dollars.

For paper.

But it wasn't just paper, was it? No, no, no. The cover was leather. And not just any leather. This felt like Italian leather. This felt like leather from a cow that went to Harvard. This cow had a PhD. This cow read philosophy. This cow had better credit than I do.

I picked it up, and I held it in my hands, and I felt it. The weight of it. The potential of it. And my brain—my stupid, lizard brain—said: "Danny, if you buy this forty-dollar notebook, you will become organized."

It’s the Stationery Placebo!

I genuinely believe that if I purchase the item, the work happens by osmosis. I think if I put the notebook under my pillow, the knowledge will seep into my ear while I sleep.

So I bought it. Of course I bought it. I also bought a pen that cost twelve dollars because it has "micro-ink technology." I don't know what that is, but I assume it writes my novel for me.

I get home. I sit at my desk. I clear away the candy wrappers. I put the notebook down. I unwrap the plastic—that satisfying crinkle. I open it to the first page. It’s pristine. It’s creamy white. It’s beautiful.

And then... the terror sets in.

Because now I have to write in it. And I have terrible handwriting. I write like a doctor who is falling down a flight of stairs.

I’m holding my twelve-dollar pen, hovering over my forty-dollar notebook, and I’m sweating. I’m thinking, "If I mess up this first page, I have to burn the house down. The book is ruined. The year is ruined."

So I write "YEARLY PLAN" at the top. But I get nervous, so the "P" looks like a "D." Now it says "YEARLY DLAN."

Great. Fantastic. I hate myself.

So I rip the page out. But you know how these notebooks are bound? You rip one page out, and the binding gets loose, and a page falls out from the back, and the whole structural integrity of the book is compromised. Now it looks raggedy.

So what do I do? I close the book. I put it on the corner of the desk. And I place my coffee mug on it.

Congratulations. I just bought a forty-dollar coaster.

That is the Resolution Delusion. The belief that the tool does the work.

It’s the same with the gym. Oh my god, the gym.

Have you been to a gym in the last three days? Don't go. It’s a war zone. It looks like a refugee camp for people in spandex.

I call them the "Gym Tourists." They’re just visiting. They have no intention of staying. They packed their bags, they bought the ticket, they’re here for the sights, and they’ll be gone by February 1st.

You can spot them immediately. The regulars—the people who actually work out—they look miserable. They’re sweating, their shirts are old, they have headphones on, and they hate everyone. That’s how you know they’re serious.

The Tourists? They are color-coordinated. They have matching headbands and wristbands. They have those giant water bottles—the Stanley cups that are basically buckets with a straw. They’re carrying more hydration than a camel needs for a cross-desert trek just to walk on a treadmill for twelve minutes.

And they don't know how anything works.

I saw a guy yesterday looking at the elliptical machine like it was an alien spaceship. He was poking it. He was trying to figure out where his feet go. He eventually just stood on the pedals and didn't move his arms, so he was just bobbing up and down like a meerkat looking for predators.

And the texting! Oh, the texting.

You can't get on a machine because someone is sitting on the leg press, not pressing any legs, just staring at their phone. They do one rep—grunt—and then five minutes of Instagram.

"Just crushing it at the gym! #NewYearNewMe #Grindset"

You’re not crushing it, Kyle! You’re crushing my will to live because I need that machine!

But I can't say anything. Because the Gym Tourists are fragile. They are running on pure, uncut optimism. If I yell at them, they might shatter.

And look, I’m not hating on people trying to get healthy. Good for you. Really. But we all know what happens on February 1st.

I call it "The Rapture."

You walk into the gym on February 1st, and it’s empty. The tumbleweeds are blowing through the cardio section. The silence is deafening. Where did they go? Did they all get fit in 31 days? Did they ascend to a higher plane of existence?

No. They got sore. They realized that exercise is hard and it hurts and it’s boring. And they realized that eating pizza on the couch is awesome. So they went home.

And the regulars look around, nod at each other, and reclaim their territory. "Welcome back. The invasion is over."

But the worst part of the Resolution Delusion isn't the gym. It’s the food.

The Diet Lie.

I don't know why we do this to ourselves. Why do we decide that on January 1st, our taste buds are going to undergo a personality transplant?

I went grocery shopping. And again, I fell for the props. I’m walking through the produce section, and I’m ignoring the things I actually like. I’m walking past the potatoes. I’m walking past the bread. Goodbye, sweet friends. I’ll see you in hell.

And I stop in front of the Kale.

Kale.

Who decided Kale was food? Seriously. Who looked at that garnish, that decoration they used to put around the salad bar at Pizza Hut to hide the ice, and said, "Yes, I should put that in my mouth"?

It tastes like angry grass. It has the texture of a reptilian scale. You have to massage it. Did you know that? You have to massage kale with oil to make it edible. I don't massage my wife as much as I’m supposed to massage this vegetable.

But I bought it. I bought a bag of kale the size of a pillowcase. I bought quinoa, which tastes like wet sand. I bought chia seeds, which get stuck in your teeth until 2028.

I bring it all home. I shove it in the fridge. And I feel good! I feel accomplished! I open the fridge door and it looks green. It looks responsible.

But here is the reality.

Three days later, I’m hungry. It’s 9 PM. I open the fridge.

The Kale is there. It’s staring at me. It’s judging me. It’s wilting a little bit, looking at me with disappointment. "You promised, Danny. You said we were going to make a salad."

And I look at the Kale, and I look behind the Kale... to the cheese.

Because there is always cheese. Cheese is the cockroach of the fridge; it survives everything.

And I have a conversation with the vegetable. I say, "Look, Kale. I respect you. I value what you bring to the table—which is iron and sadness. But right now? I need the cheese."

And I shove the Kale to the back. And it sits there. And it turns into this green slime. It liquefies. It becomes a science experiment. In three weeks, I’m going to have to throw it out with a hazmat suit.

That’s the cycle!

We buy the aspirational groceries for the aspirational person we want to be, and then the real person has to throw them away.

It’s expensive! Being delusional is expensive!

I calculated it. Between the gym membership I won't use, the notebook I ruined, the pens I lost, and the vegetables I let rot, my "Fresh Start" cost me about four hundred dollars.

For four hundred dollars, I could have bought so much pizza. I could have bought a really nice bottle of whiskey and just enjoyed being mediocre.

And that’s the punchline, folks. That’s the cosmic joke.

We are so obsessed with being "New."

"New Year, New Me."

Why? What was wrong with the old you?

Okay, don't answer that. There was plenty wrong with the old you. You have back pain and you spend too much money on coffee and you have an addiction to doom-scrolling. I get it.

But this idea that we need to be a completely different person? That’s too much pressure. That’s why we crash and burn.

We try to go from zero to one hundred in a single day. We try to go from "Couch Potato" to "Olympian." We try to go from "Chaos Demon" to "Marie Kondo."

And when we inevitably fail—because we are human beings, not robots—we crash hard. We spiral. We eat the entire cheesecake because we missed one gym session. "Well, I ruined the streak, might as well destroy my arteries."

It’s all or nothing. And it’s usually nothing.

So, here is my proposal. I have a counter-resolution.

Stop trying to be a "New Person." The New Person is a lie. The New Person is a marketing scam designed to sell you yoga pants and blenders.

Let’s just resolve to be... Slightly Less Disappointing.

Can we put that on a bumper sticker? "2026: Slightly Less Disappointing."

That is achievable!

"New Person" says: "I will read 50 books this year."

"Slightly Less Disappointing Person" says: "I will read one book, and maybe it won't be a picture book."

"New Person" says: "I will run a marathon."

"Slightly Less Disappointing Person" says: "I will take the stairs instead of the elevator, unless I’m carrying groceries, in which case, elevator me, baby."

"New Person" says: "I will never eat sugar again."

"Slightly Less Disappointing Person" says: "I will not eat the donuts in the breakroom... every single day. Maybe just on Fridays."

See? That’s doable! That’s low stakes!

If you lower the bar, you can actually step over it. If you put the bar at Olympic height, you’re just going to walk right under it and go to the pub.

I’m looking at my forty-dollar notebook right now. It’s sitting there, with its one ruined page and the coffee ring on the cover.

And you know what? I’m going to keep using it.

I’m not going to tear the page out. I’m not going to buy a new one. I’m going to write on the next line. And my handwriting is still going to look like a chicken scratched it while having a seizure. And I’m probably going to doodle in the margins.

And I’m going to write: "Day 1: Ate cheese. Did not die. Success."

Because that’s real.

The "New You" is a fantasy. The "Real You" is the one who has to live in your skin for the next 365 days. So be nice to the Real You. Stop trying to bully yourself into perfection with expensive props.

The notebook doesn't make you a writer. The sneakers don't make you a runner. The kale doesn't make you a good person.

You are the only thing that changes you. And you usually do it slowly, annoyingly, and while complaining the whole time.

And that’s fine. That’s hilarious. That’s human.

So, go ahead. Keep the gym membership. But maybe, just maybe, don't text on the leg press. If you do that, I will find you, and I will judge you while eating my cheese.

And for the love of everything holy, throw away the kale. You’re not going to eat it. It’s already rotting. Just let it go.

Happy New Year, you weirdos. Good luck with the disillusionment. I’ll see you at the pizza place on February 1st.