The Q&A Hole Returns for Another Year

It's a new year – huzzah! – and here comes a new series of our Q&A Hole feature, wherein your reporter asks questions of various interesting people around Austin and beyond.

(Specifically: he asks them and then – with a gnat's-ass amount of editing (if any) – he prints the responses here for all to see.)

The questions can range from As Serious As It Gets to, ah, Pretty Damn Whimsical, and we reckon the answers – from your friends and neighbors, from minor celebrities and international superstars – will tend to fall along those same lines.

And here's the first one, with a fresh new batch to follow every Monday at 10am:

WHAT'S THE HARDEST THING ABOUT KEEPING NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS?

Amanda Stilwell of In The Thick of It: Not making them in the first place.

Danny Palumbo, Comedian: The hardest thing is remembering what the hell they are. That's why I write them down on my wall. Last year I wanted to quit drinking; I didn't do it, but every time I looked at my wall I at least felt bad.

Annie La Ganga of The Grownup Lady Story Company: Resolutions are hard to keep because you are a lazy, weak-willed addict. You have the disease of perfectionism and abandon your plans at the very first stumble. You fall off the wagon because you are not even really holding on. You hate the discomfort of effort. You are a self-centered child and you want everything to be easy. You have no faith in yourself. You are a liar and a fraud. You will never, ever, get better. You are an asshole. You are one of us. Welcome to the human race.

Katie Pengra, Comedian: Change is like cookie dough; if you have patience and take all the correct steps, then you will have a lovely outcome of fully baked cookies. Sometimes, however, we try to do too much at once. We just eat the whole bowl of cookie dough because we can’t wait for the outcome, and then we can’t fit into our jeans and our mom asks us why we have “let ourselves go.” Instead of trying to make huge changes at once, I have decided that I just need to make small improvements that help me to accomplish a goal. For example, my goal is to become a parkour champion by 2016. But my goal for January 2015 is to just master doing super sweet flip kicks over fire hydrants. One step at a time, you know?

Justin Davis of Techcitement and Blue Iris Therapy: Having a resolution worth keeping. Resolutions are usually things like “Exercise more,” “Create more often,” or “Cook more regularly.” They end up being so universal and generalized that they can be forgettable, and never mind June, you’ve forgotten what you resolved to do before the short month of February is up. Calling them New’s Year’s Resolutions is also a misnomer, because resolutions are typically about repairing some poor behavior from the previous year in the hopes of not repeating the same mistakes. Instead of resolutions that keep you thinking in the past, how about making New Year’s goals? Goals—attainable and specific goals at that—are about giving yourself a future to work toward. Instead of “exercise more,” make it “Run a 5K in under 30 minutes.” Instead of “Create more often,” make it “Write at least 100 pages of that book I’ve been putting off.” Drop the resolutions to fix the year that already happened and consider creating goals to help build a strong new year. Instead of “Cook more regularly,” make it “Have dinner parties with different themes throughout the year.” Whether you choose something like “Apply to grad school,” “Run with the dog in the greenbelt,” or “Actively smile,” give yourself a goal instead of a resolution, so you have something to work toward instead of escape from.

Ruby Willmann of The Hideout Theatre: The most difficult thing about keeping New Year’s Resolutions is trying to keep resolutions that you don’t actually want to do. I think alongside those classic feelings of a clean-slate and a new beginning, I sometimes let myself believe that I’m actually turning into a new person. So then I choose resolutions that I don’t really want. At the end of the day, people do what they want, or at least I do. So if I don’t really want to go to the gym everyday, and I just think I should go….chances are that my resolution is going to end up in the trash along with those old New Year’s Eve sparklers. So think less should and more want. Less “I should drink more water” and more “I want to allow myself to buy those fancy carbonated waters that I love so much.” Less “I should do ten crunches a day” and more “I want to have sex with my husband every day.” Pick the right resolution, and suddenly little life-changes aren’t so hard after all.