To me, resolutions sound like broken promises. I’m not trying to come across as mean or pessimistic, but they are. We think that just because of New Years Eve, making a “resolution” means sticking to it and I can’t even count how many times I gave up.

Yeah. I fail at life. It happened on New Years when I came to the realization that resolutions are a load of good-for-nothing promises. My dad always says that he’ll get fit and lose weight in the upcoming year. Does he? No. He sticks to it for about two weeks until I find him sitting on the couch eating powdered doughnuts.

What bothers me the most is the whole institution of promises. They’re basically only made to be broken. I remember a few years back when I made a resolution to not procrastinate on my schoolwork. What did I do a few weeks into the new year? Guess. A few times I swore I’d get fit—did I? Nope. I worked on it for about two hours before I ate a slice of cake. Yeah, I know. I blame my weak willpower.

It seems silly—to make a promise to myself and know that I’m going to eventually break it. But I understand why people do it sometimes. Like me, I get too wrapped up in the festivities of the last night in an old worn out year. I figure that hopefully once that clock strikes twelve I get a clean slate to erase my mistakes.

So I make a list of all the things that are (consequently) mistakes I want to fix. To me, a resolution means righting the wrongs I made in the duration of 365 days. But do I go through with them? Absolutely not. I’m only human, not Superwoman. Unfortunately some mistakes are impossible to fix.

Then again, I want to set up a goal I can accomplish for the year. But I don’t want to start something halfway like losing weight or finally getting my sister’s dogs to learn tricks. I want to make a mark—I want to make a garden full of flowers even if they’ll probably end up dying. I want to make time to finish painting my front porch. I want to redo my room in a way that reflects not what I want to be, but who I am right now. I just need to get things done. Make progress and show that the year hasn’t been wasted like before.

For myself and to others I say: no more petty goals just because everyone else comes up with them. Make something last. Make something matter. Choose to become a better person, physically and mentally. And don’t just make it for a promise of one year; make the promise to last a lifetime because in the end, that’s the greatest reward.