![\"epic](\"http:\/\/arts.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-content\/uploads\/epic-fetch.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\nIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a genre. And with that, \u00c2\u00a0all of you click away from this blog because: duh.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
Every January 1st, or around this time, facebook\/news-outlets\/twitter\/tumblr\/friends\/real-life\/etc. all start to either embrace, really or ironically, or denounce, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153new year resolution\u00e2\u20ac\u009d way of being.<\/p>\n
1) Goal: Fit hegemonic beauty standards for white, cis men. (Every year I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve made this goal and oops! Always a fail. Sixpacks are like the elusivity of Mew, or so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been told.)
\n2) Goal: Stop doing (x) \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bad\u00e2\u20ac\u009d habit: binge drinking, smoking, doing tons of drugs, having \u00e2\u20ac\u0153meaningless\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sex, procrastinating, hating myself, never leaving my bed . . . . (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m stubborn, so my bad habits, some\/most\/none\/whatever, usually do end when I tell them to. However, not all of them. Bad habits are like dark chocolate, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153healthy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d if you do them a little bit at a time.)<\/p>\n
Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get me wrong. I love goals. I love planning. I love aims. My friends constantly remind me about how obsessed I am with the future and how I want to get things just right. With this in mind, however, most new year resolutions, on a global (everyone) and local (me), level tend to miserably fail on one if not ALL of these goals. But its not so tragic, rather it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a comedy of errors. All of us fail every year, right when we want a fresh start.<\/p>\n
{Busting your ass at the gym EVERY day all day long for a week so that by the time you quit working out you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done your body more harm than good, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve exhausted yourself and made yourself sick, and now you feel even worse.}<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 For the strong of heart: treadmill fails<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0 {You tell yourself you want to be more (a)social so you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re either overwhelmed and crying in public or underwhelmed crying at home. And for us intro\/extrovert mixes whose lives a constant balancing act of ways we get recharged, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re left crying everywhere always.}<\/p>\n {Trying to fix your life by yourself \u00c2\u00a0rather than seeking help from friends, family, your community, or from other \u00e2\u20ac\u0153professional\u00e2\u20ac\u009d people always ends badly. Not only do you fail yourself but then you lose any hope of doing anything alone. AND in this individualistic, capitalistic society, \u00c2\u00a0personal failure isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bad it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s evil. So now you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re Satan, surprise!}<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Instead of making \u00e2\u20ac\u0153goals\u00e2\u20ac\u009d this new year, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve decided to make changes. I refuse to have a life that maps too well onto a comedy of errors and not, instead, onto an Epic. Changes lead to goals, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to pretend to myself that I know where I want my life to go in a year from now. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know where I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be, let alone who I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be, in a year from now. 2015 is just as opaque as 2013, so I will stick to the present.<\/p>\n Some of my changes include: I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just going to leave those here.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n My main plans for this new year is to embrace change. I will be turning in my thesis in 3 months. I will be graduating in 5. I will be travelling to Europe in 6. I will be taking the GRE in 8. I will be *hopefully* moving in 9. \u00e2\u20ac\u01533-6-9 you drink wine, monkey on your back you feel just fine.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m out of wine, I hate monkey massages, but Cat Power still gets me.<\/p>\n By making these changes–big and small alike–my life really can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fail. This is the main thing I hate about New Years resolutions. All goals cannot be met or else the world would be a different place. Failure is imminent and I will either queerly embrace this art or thrive in redefining what success\/failure\/change\/goals mean to me insofar as I can change my life one way. Change it back. Change it differently. So for me I resolve to make changes and that way I either change or stay the same. I cannot fail.<\/p>\n Thus, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really nothing that can go TOO wrong. Somedays I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be seduced by Calypso, others I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have to battle \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the Citizen,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll learn something from each interaction, each movement, each path I take. And that, my friends, will be my Epic new year. Always learning, always growing, always reflecting. So when I get to 2015, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have my adventures mapped out, the places I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen remembered, the people I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve loved etched into my heart, and my existence will transform into a 800 page novel with many more volumes to come.<\/p>\n Stop trying to make \u00e2\u20ac\u0153epic\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a thing, everyone. Epic came and went like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fetch\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sadly never has. BUT. While I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m opposed to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153epic,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Epic\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (capital E) is entirely different. \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a genre. And with that, \u00c2\u00a0all of you click away […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4376"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4376"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4386,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4376\/revisions\/4386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n1) \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Evaluate life more often.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\n2) \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Love more freely and deeply.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"