January 2nd

No one talks about the inevitable arrival of January 2nd. Poor January 2nd has to deal with the burden of actually having the apply and do those new year's resolutions people, with hangover giddiness, make with the falsehood that life can be greater than it currently is.

We countdown the seconds to January 1st, and understandably so because the next day is so ripe with potential like an avocado that is ready to eat for a day before it looks like wet soil.

But January 1st, we make our new year's resolution and make, what I like to call, The Plan ™.

Here are the basic building blocks of The Plan ™ :

• It will be so unrealistic, that it should make you unrecognizable by the end of the year.

• It revolves around happiness that can be only found in a hallucinogen that grows on highest peak of a mountain that doesn't exist.

• It is created out of pettiness because the idea is that someone should feel so bad about the fact that you won at life while they will suck and always will suck because they are so far beneath you that you can't even hear them as they scream as they being melted by purest form of magma (no one ever said it was an easy life not being as good as you).

• At least one, if not all, will be influenced by social media--particularly Instagram--because if it cannot be documented on Instagram, what is the point in all of this?

• They all perfectly require you to spend money that you don't have which you will justify even though one of your goals were to be more financially responsible.

• etc.

Of course January 1st is a fun day! You've basically created your own bible. It's the book you swear by when it's convenient for you.

But then January 2nd comes along. And no one talks about how underwhelming and overwhelming January 2nd actually is. It's basically the first--the true first--day. The actual first day that is followed by the rest of the year. It's the first work day of the year in which you put your best foot forward because this year, you're going to to a better job of hitting your deadlines at a respectable time instead cramming the night before. If it's the weekend, then there is so much pressure to be productive when on any other day you would have just stayed in bed and enjoyed the fact that you don't have work.

Humans are naturally superstitious--even the ones that claim they're not. Sure, they might not be religious, but they aren't immune from the anxieties of that first day of the year when it feels like it maybe a prediction of how the rest of the year goes. Even worse, no matter how hard you try, and maybe succeed, in starting the of year right, by the end of year, you could have had the worst 365 days of your life.

If January 2nd wasn't stressful for you before, it is now.

One of my resolutions were to not make a big deal about the small things, and this blog-post maybe a little counterproductive, but it's basically me thinking about anxieties we put ourselves through when it comes to perfection. The perfect body, the perfect love life, the perfect social life, the perfect career that responds well to the capitalist notion that we're only as valuable as our productivity to our jobs, the perfect self-esteem that makes us feel like were the maniac pixie dream girl, love interest in a movie about a well-rounded male character who needs to find himself, etc.

And poor January 2nd has the suffer the brunt of the

burden in making these ideas of perfection

come to life when all December 31st and January 1st

had to do is all the white-collar work.