Everyone loves a holiday, and most people make goals of some sort, whether little daily ones, weekly ones, New Year’s resolutions or lofty lifetime bucket-list-type goals. I’m pretty sure the whole point is to work to achieve them, yes?

Alas, sometimes we fail.

As if failing wasn’t bad enough, you can actually plan to fail.

Enter: Ditch Your New Year’s Resolutions Day

I have no idea what the origin is, or who was the idiot who thought up this one, but can we agree that planning to fail is just … dumb? In honor of one of the most stupid “holidays” ever created, I give you –

FIVE WAYS TO DITCH YOUR GOALS

1.     Don’t make concrete plans. That’s right, you have my permission to make those drunken New Year’s Eve resolutions, but avoid taking any steps to actually accomplish them. Besides, you do better when you fly by the seat of your pants. Planning is for nerdy types with pocket protectors and bullet journals. You, my friend, are an artist and artists are expected to pull their genius out of their asses. Planning takes the romance out of it. You’ll get around to that goal when the muse strikes and you feel like it.

2.     Don’t expect setbacks. You’re a machine. You’re on fire. You won’t mess this up because this is your year. Nothing will go wrong and you definitely won’t lose motivation. No need for a back-up plan or a way to get back on track – only those who expect to fail make a Plan B. If you do have a setback, make sure to blow it up into epic proportions to garner as much sympathy and misery commiseration as possible. Milk that baby for all its worth. Whine about it, tweet about it, laugh at how silly you were to make the goal and then ditch that sucker. There’s always next year.

3.     Be totally unrealistic. Hands down, the best way to fail is to set goals that you know will never, ever happen. For instance, I could always dig up the annual goal of losing weight, but that’s too easy and vague. No, this 30-something mom of two wants to lose weight … so she can become a Suicide Girl and travel around the country performing in burlesque shows to show those 20-somethings who’s boss. Mom Bod FTW! Okay, so maybe some 30-something moms could actually pull that off, but not this one. It’s completely ludicrous and not something I’d actually want to do anyway. (Instead, I’m shooting for health goals, not weight goals or outward-facing goals that have anything to do with proving myself to anyone.) But if you want to fail and ditch those goals, aim big. REALLY, REALLY BIG, and make your goal nearly impossible. Reality is for TV, not you.

4.     Forget why you made the goal in the first place. It’s so … yesterday. What were you thinking anyway? Now that the momentum of the new year has had 17 days to wear off and we’re back to the everyday grind, goals seem cliche. You want to lose weight? Pfft. You’re attractive and have a great personality. Forget that your mother was recently diagnosed with the same kind of cancer that killed your grandfather and aunt. Modern medicine is amazing. It’ll be fine. You made a goal to read 50 books this year? Holy smokes, do you plan to pee or eat in the next 11 1/2 months? Or maybe you survive on four hours of sleep per night. Forget that you’ve averaged three hours of binge-watching the latest series on TV every night this past year and that you have no idea what your “bookish” friends are talking about. And forget that you really don’t understand when they accuse you of having a short attention span. Again, it’ll be fine.

5.     Your life is awesome exactly as it is now. Why change anything? If some type-A jerk asks you where you see yourself in a year or five years, tell them you live for today! Carpe diem! You have a roof over your head, some chicken-flavored ramen and a bus pass. What more could you want?

And there you have it – five ways to ditch your goals and resolutions. Inevitable failure awaits!

What were your top resolutions or goals for this year? How are they going?