One year ago I broke a long-standing tradition of mine when I published my annual-ish Happy New Year post and refused to list my goals for the upcoming year.

My reasoning? Well, according to an old TED talk, telling someone your goals makes them less likely to happen. Yep. In the vast mystery that is the human brain, just telling someone about a goal can stimulate the same gray matter as finishing the goal. The act of putting it out there is enough to check the mental “done” box.

So after years and years of divulging my great plans to the world and accomplishing nearly nothing, I thought I’d keep it to myself for once and see if that changed anything.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t.

I won’t rehash all the reasons here, in this post, but a great deal of it was out of my control. (At least that’s what I tell myself.) The year, for better or worse, came and went and most of the “done” boxes went unchecked.

So I’m kicking off the new year in my usual gloomy and defeated mood, reflecting on a list of goals for the new year which look disturbingly similar to nearly every previous year. And I don’t know what to do about it. Like most regular people, my list of obligations far exceeds my allotment of free time. My favorite commentary by The Onion still reads like an autobiography.

As my existential nihilism continues to play leapfrog with my desire to create something, I’ve been looking for ways to beat this and come out on top. And I think I found a good one.

Fans of the television show Friends may remember the episode The One Where Ross Finds Out. Ross travels to China for business, and in his absence, Rachel falls for him. Unfortunately, Ross returns with a new girlfriend and Rachel visibly struggles with this unexpected and unwelcome development. While on a date one night, she realizes her problem is she never got closure. I’ll leave the rest of the episode for you to watch.

Closure! That’s it.

So here’s my grand plan for 2019. I’m going to fall for Ross while he’s in China, hate on Julie, go out on a date and get that closure I so desperately need. At least that’s code-speak for what I actually intend to do. Sadly, the real plan must wait for a later blog post. At the moment of this typing, I have a very important obligation to attend to. Time to go to sleep!