Girl on the Net

As a massive hedonist, I want you to find your joy. No one else in your life can ever have your happiness as their top priority (which is right – only you can truly know all the things that will bring you pleasure), so it probably needs to be a high priority for you. Around this time of year, some of you will likely have broken – or be about to break – one or more of the punitive resolutions you set yourself on the first of January. Restricting pleasure or causing yourself pain in the name of self improvement. I’m not qualified to tell you how to live a healthy or virtuous life, but if you want to make resolutions you can stick to, I have a few tips from the hedonist gutter that might help you set ones you’re less inclined to break.

The following post will talk about things like diet, weight loss, body image, exercise, and other things people try to make themselves do. I hope I won’t be discussing any of them in a bodyshaming or otherwise cunty way, I just wanted to warn you that we’ll touch on these topics. If you think your body is bad or wrong and your resolution is to change that, please please go read this incredible piece by Robyn about how you have a normal human body.

It might seem counterintuitive to listen to a hedonist when it comes to resolutions: surely we’re all too busy wanking, eating crisps and snorting coke off each other’s genitals? How could a woman who is so often drunk dare tell you how to live your life? And you’d have a point. But I think pleasure-seekers such as myself have something valuable to contribute to this conversation, because you’re more likely to stick to a resolution that’s enjoyable and we’re pretty good at crowbarring joy from even the most mundane activities.

Broadly, there are two categories of ‘self-improvement’ resolution: things you want to do less, and things you want to do more. They’re difficult to stick to because usually the things you want to do less bring you pleasure, and the things you want to do more bring you pain – at least in the short term. Here’s how to redraft your punitive resolutions to inject some much-needed joy.

I will do less of…

These are the restrictive resolutions: I will drink less alcohol, I’ll eat fewer burgers, I will watch less reality TV. I’ll restrict the things I put into my mind and body because I’ve recognised that the pleasure they bring is only short-term, and there’s pain for me later down the line when I realise I am hungover, feel unhealthy, or have spent too many nights velcroed to the sofa.

Here’s how we fix this: instead of thinking ‘I will do less of X’, instead consider ‘how can I do X in a better, more pleasurable way?’

Find your joy by… turning down the frequency, turning up the intensity

Let’s say your resolution is to drink less alcohol, and at the moment you drink a bottle of wine most evenings because it’s winter and you’re cold and wine is lovely. Instead of buying the cheapest bottle of Pinot Grigio from Tesco, invest in something really nice. Something you can roll around your tongue with your eyes closed like a wanky sommelier. Don’t tell yourself you’re not allowed to drink any wine at all – that way lies almost certain failure. Tell yourself you will only drink the truly lovely wine, a glass a night. Then challenge yourself to savour every sip.

Likewise burgers: if you really love burgers, you’re unlikely to be successful if you tell yourself you’ll never eat them again. Instead challenge yourself to find the best burger within 3 miles of your house (or more if you live in the countryside – I live in the best part of London so there are dozens of delicious burgers a mere stone’s throw away. Applications to the usual address if you’d like to propose marriage or whatever). Allow yourself one really fabulous burger a week. Or a month. Or whatever. Work your way through the most delicious examples you can find (or make your own), and allow yourself to look forward to your treat – savour it, relish it, give it marks out of ten. Keep a little notebook where you review each and every one. Don’t tell yourself you may never have this joy – allow yourself to indulge on occasion, then milk each occasion for every single drop of pleasure you find.

Same with reality TV. You can probably complete this for yourself now, can’t you? Pick one reality TV show you really don’t want to miss. Allow yourself to watch it with gusto and glee and concentration. Put your phone down so you can focus, or livepost about it if that’s what makes you happy. Talk about it to your friends, listen to podcasts which analyse it if you like, and really let yourself lean in and look forward to this specific one.

The key to adapting restrictive resolutions is to stop seeing them as things you must ‘not’ do and instead max out the joy you feel when you do them, while sensibly reducing the frequency. The less often you let yourself do it, the more you need to relish the pleasure it brings.

I’m not talking out of my arse here, by the way: one of the advice columnists from the literal New York Times gave some similar wisdom in this podcast. In fact, that’s partly what prompted me to write this belated post. 

I will do more of…

Ambitious resolutions (not sure if this is the best term for these, I’m open to suggestions): I will cycle more often, I’ll run a marathon, I’ll repaint every room in the house. These are sometimes framed in broader terms like ‘I’ll go to the gym more often’ or ‘I’ll lose weight.’ But broad resolutions suck ass, sorry, and you’re definitely going to fail because you haven’t even set a benchmark for success. You need to be specific and defined, and ideally avoid chasing a fuzzy goal that you’ll never be able to celebrate, because you’ll never quite know if you’ve hit it. Set a useful target, don’t set yourself up for failure.

So ‘I will exercise more’ becomes ‘I will go for a one hour walk every other day’ or ‘I will swim for thirty minutes per day’ or what have you. ‘I’ll make the house nice’ becomes ‘I will repaint each room’, which is more specific and also gives you reason to celebrate every time you get another one finished.

That said, how do we take these otherwise onerous tasks and inject them with a little bit of joy?

Find your joy by… embarking on a side quest

Exercise is boring. It’s OK to say that, I think. A lot of the time, whether you’re training for a marathon or just hoping to get a bit more in shape, exercise itself is a dull activity where you move your body but your brain whirrs around, focusing on the books you could be reading instead. So for these resolutions, personally I think the best way to inject joy is to give yourself a little side quest.

Examples of side quests I’ve embarked upon to make myself go on a silly mental health walk every day:

• take one photo per day by the pond in my local park. This was aimed at helping to get me outside during Covid, when all was dark and sad. I picked a spot roughly half an hour’s walk from my house, and took a picture of myself next to it every day. The pictures are shit, but I walked for an hour a day every single day during those awful months. And I ended up enjoying it – success!
• walk the Capital Ring in a year. I actually did this in less than four months, because it turns out the Capital Ring’s not that long, but it worked as a side quest and it got me into bits of the city I’d never have seen otherwise.
• listen to, and rate, all of Rolling Stone’s Top 50 Pop Punk albums. Each day I’d download a new album, then give it a listen while I stomped through the streets. I abandoned the #50PopPunk side quest because it reminded me of my ex, but I’ll pick it up at some point in future. And in the meantime, it got me out and about.

See what I mean? Find your joy! Pick a side quest and focus on the pleasure you’ll be having with that rather than the pain of making yourself do The Big Thing that is your harder goal. If your aim is to ‘paint the house’, pick a podcast series or audiobook that you’ve always meant to listen to but never had time, and set yourself the side quest of doing that while you’re juggling rollers and tins.

Break your goals down into small, manageable pieces and then focus on how best to make each piece bring you joy. As a hedonist, I assure you, dopamine is the best motivator.

If all else fails then…

Set some resolutions that are actually fun

The world is fucked and everything’s horrible. It’s fine to admit this, I reckon, as it’s fine to resolve that you’re human so in order to survive you must sometimes hunt down pleasure amidst the shit. Personally, I don’t have any self-improvement goals this year, and although I’ve set myself a few fun side quests (complete the London Loop, finish off my top 50 pop punk project, others that involve dating which I’ll talk about later) I am not looking to lose weight, stop drinking, or otherwise deprive myself of joy. But if you’ve given yourself resolutions that make you feel virtuous and sad, you could definitely do worse than adding one which brings you a kick of excitement.

Last year my resolution was to send one email a month to someone whose work I admired, telling them how much it meant to me. That was a pretty fun one. I forgot some months, but mostly I remembered, and I even got a reply from one of my all-time heroes. In the process I spread a bit of joy around, because people who write/sing/play always appreciate knowing that their work has touched somebody.

In a similar vein, a while back I was feeling a bit disconnected from my family, so I suggested to our WhatsApp group that each Friday we send a picture or tell a story of something that brought us joy this week. We talk more often now, and it’s wonderful to have a focus on the cool things my people have done or experienced. When we did an annual version in December, my brother even told us that the weekly ‘Friday joy update’ was his favourite thing of the year. PLS STEAL THIS IDEA.

The fundamental advice I’m giving you here is to try and find the pleasure in your goals, and if you can’t do that then at least give yourself additional sub-goals that are aimed purely at making you (and/or others) grin.

Want to read more? Make a list of books by your favourite authors, and line up one to read each month that makes you thrill with anticipation.

Want to spend more quality time with your partner? Write a shared doc with them where you each contribute ideas for fun little dates. Again: anticipate. Look forward to. Milk each drop of pleasure from the knowledge of what you might do.

Want to smile a little as the world falls to pieces around you? Give yourself permission to feel pleasure.

Find your joy!