Maintaining my New Year's Resolutions

By Morgan Collins, First Year, French and Spanish

The Croft Magazine // Maintaining New Year's Resolutions can be a struggle, and certainly no easy feat. Whether you break them two days in, manage a whole month before caving, or don't even bother with them at all, we all have different experiences with them. One student, Morgan, journals their first month of 2020 and how well they're keeping up.

December 31:
The 31st of December rolls around once again and whilst out for New Year’s cocktails the chat inevitably turns around to resolutions. This year for the first time in a while I actually got a few to share with the group, so clearing the throat I smugly announced that this year I will be giving up social smoking (with cigarette in hand), get back into reading for pleasure, and to only buy one new piece of clothing a month. This last resolution evoked a torrent of laughter from the group, and as a confessed shopaholic I understood their scepticism but with sustainability talk constantly in my ear I felt I was up to the challenge to reduce my fashion carbon footprint.

January 5:
After a trip to Bicester Village, which for those who don’t know is a designer outlet shopping centre, I am feeling very pleased with myself. I managed to abstain from buying anything new (despite being very tempted by a beautiful pair of Zadig & Voltaire boots), and honestly it was refreshing to browse without the pressure of having to find something new to buy. Cigarettes consumed are zero and I even managed to finish a book on the fashion industry called ‘How Luxury Lost its Lustre’ – I am going strong.

January 8:
Some cracks are starting to show now... and after a few cheeky cigs on a night out, which don’t really count if you’re drunk, right? I am now feeling less motivated to maintain my resolutions, and even succumbed to buying a stunning pair of Alexander Wang jeans (at a ridiculously discounted price too good to leave) but this can be the one piece of clothing I’m allowing myself to buy a month so all is not lost!

January 15:
Reading for pleasure is going strong and after handing in two pieces of coursework, I am enjoying sitting down and getting stuck into Jeanette Winterson’s latest novel.

January 17:
Another little relapse today on the shopping front with the buying of a & Other Stories lilac jumper, but you know I don’t have any lilac in my wardrobe, so it was surely a necessary purchase – let’s just pretend this didn’t happen.

January 20:
YIKES! Now on my way home from the pub and have just had a quick look in my bag to see I have polished off two packets of fags; how did this happen? I must have been sharing them out with everyone, yes that’s what it was – I can’t have finished two whole packets could I?

January 24:
January blues have truly settled in now and I am just craving the release of endorphins that buying clothes gives me, and after a shopping trip with my mum I seemed to have bought a GANNI raincoat, Zara jumper, and a new pair of ankle boots. My bank account is looking considerably lower and I am just wishing I never made these stupid resolutions in the first place.

January 27:
Back in university now and truly cannot afford to buy anything new; however, in the clothes shop I work at staff sales has hit which means that for all sales items 70% is taken off the sale price and then our 25% discount is added on top, so naturally I went a little crazy and came away having spent over £100 pounds and am too ecstatic with all my new purchases to even think about the money. At this point new year’s resolutions feel like a distant memory.

January 31:
Thankfully, we are at the end of the month. The stats are as follows: number of cigarettes smoked is approximately 50, number of clothes bought is 17 (not including shoes, of which I have bought 3 pairs), number of pounds spent is well over £400, and number of books read is 5 which I am pretty chuffed with and is something I am definitely trying to keep up. So evidently my resolutions flopped pretty epic-ly, but hey there’s always next year.