Already failed your New Year's Resolution? Then try a Seahawks Resolution instead

From Wikipedia:

A New Year's resolution is a secular tradition, most common in the Western Hemisphere but also found in the Eastern Hemisphere, in which a person makes a promise to do an act of self-improvement or something slightly nice, such as opening doors for people beginning from New Year's Day.

I find it interesting that whoever wrote that entry, put "I resolve to open doors for people this year!" as the first and foremost resolution on the New Year's Resolution Wikipedia page. I am now picturing some guy (probably the one who wrote that sentence) that constantly finds himself at doors with other people standing by and going "Fuck off!" to every one of them. If you're the special kind of asshole that does not open a door for a person standing right by you upon opening the door (I'm not a misogynist -- I don't think -- but I don't think ladies should have to open doors for other people and men should definitely do the opening for any nearby ladies, even if they don't plan to go into that building still give it a shot) then I'm also going to assume you're not making a resolution to start doing so.

Your resolution should just be along the lines of "I'm gonna try to not be a selfish prick for the rest of my days" and see what pops out, but doors should be a given.

I also like to think that this Wikipedia entry was edited by the world's worst door man.

I don't know if I have ever in my life had a New Year's Resolution. Not officially. I have always wanted to be less fat, 365 days a year. In the times that I have lost weight, I never started from January 1, I have started from a day where I happened to accidentally look at a photo of myself. I'm going to probably have to force myself to look at a photo of me soon again, and that's what I want to talk about today.

Which is, the most successful resolution I've ever had in my life, and it was born out of two things:

- Randomness

- Crippling depression

Almost one year ago, I had both one of the best moments of my life and one of the worst, within maybe five minutes of each other. We all did. On January 13, 2012, the Seahawks scored 21 fourth quarter points to take a one-point lead over the Falcons with :34 seconds left to play and a 28-27 lead. I was at The Backstage bar in Culver City, one of the best Seahawks bars in this country I'll contend, and I jumped for joy, hugged strangers, maybe kissed some, and tears poured from my eyes.

Then a kickoff return to the 35, two passes for 41 yards by Matt Ryan, and a 49-yard field goal by Matt Bryant later, I had no energy to give for tears anymore.

I had no energy at all. Everything sucks. Life is terrible. Please, please, please just be some stupid simulation and unplug my data cord.

I was semi-drunk from watching the game but then I got all the way drunk. I am certain I went out to smoke one more cigarette, but I honestly don't remember much from that afternoon until the evening, it all seemed like a fever dream. I woke up around 7 PM with that awful taste in my mouth of whiskey, McDonald's chicken nuggets, cigarettes, and not nearly sleeping off my alcohol since it was more of a midday nap. I walked around the dark apartment, a buddy passed out on the couch and only the television illuminated the living room, didn't turn on a light, and went back to bed.

Then I stayed there for two more days.

I got out a few times to go to the bathroom, but otherwise that's where I stayed. I barely ate and I didn't even want to smoke another cigarette. And then I realized, I didn't even want to smoke another cigarette.

I decided to turn a negative into a positive, and instead of January 13, 2012 being the day that Matt Ryan and Matt Bryant ruined my life, it would be the last day I ever smoked a cigarette. And it still is.

I smoked cigarettes for 10 years of my life, from the time I was 20. It actually started out as a chewing tobacco habit that was passed on to me by a buddy (if you've never tried chaw or tobacco of any sort, DO NOT TRY IT. It seriously hits like a ton of bricks and it's hard to stop from that point, I heard "Magic Carpet Ride" in my head the first time I took a dip) and then I transferred that to smoking. I never once tried to quit in my twenties, mostly because I knew I would fail.

Everyone has always talked about how hard it is to quit, and I just opted to believe them. But the truth is that for whatever reason, I have not even considered smoking a cigarette since last January 13. I believe that reason is because I didn't base it on an arbitrary day of the year, I based it on something that really meant something to me. If I ever smoked another cigarette, then January 13 would be meaningless again except for that loss.

For 2-4 weeks, I craved them, but I knew I'd never smoke again. At this point, one week short of my year anniversary, I'll just have a dream every now and then where I've f*@#ed up and smoke a cigarette again, but then I wake up and realize it was all a dream, just like how every decent movie ends.

And so, I have decided to try that same theory again this year (again with the weight loss) and to pass it along to you. I give you the opportunity to start your Seahawks Resolution on the day that Seattle plays its last game of the season, whether it's out of crippling depression or out of something that doesn't hurt the heart so bad (as a Seattle sports fan, I'm not entirely sure what the opposite of losing is??)

Some of the reasons you may want to try a Seahawks Resolution:

- There's still something in your life that you'd like to quit or begin or change and New Years Resolutions have never worked for you

- You've already f***ed up your New Years Resolution

- You, like me, also know that years don't begin and end on January 1, they begin and end when the Seahawks season is over

- You just realized that you are a shithead when it comes to opening doors for people.