The weird thing is, I didn’t even make any resolutions this year.

And yet here I am, walking four miles every day, emptying out my closets, and eating like some sort of wild-eyed 19th century diet guru.

It’s all about the mastication, you know.

No, honestly, I have no idea why I am suddenly living like such a model of propriety. Did all of your resolutions somehow get the wrong address stuck on them, leaving them all piled in a wet, sodden mess on my front doorstep?

Because I am more than a little bewildered by my sudden and relentless drive to pore over home remodeling magazines, ponder closet insert dimensions, and compare swatches of hardwood laminate flooring planks and penny tiles for the bathroom.

Why, I ask you, am I suddenly absolutely delighted at the prospect of cutting down on the amount of olive oil I use in my dinner, on limiting my carb intake, on choosing the leanest possible cut of meat and surrounding it with a truly startling amount of gently steamed vegetables?

It is confusing to me, my apparently unsurmountable urge to lace up my sneakers every morning and stride out of my little house for a brisk four-mile walk, swinging my arms and elevating my heart rate to just the proper amount, waving a cheerful, though determined hello! to the bundled up joggers and bicyclists who cross my path on the otherwise deserted and chilly bike path through the woods.

It is deeply, deeply confusing.

For this is not how I envisioned spending my new year. Actually, I had planned to be rather decadent this year, truth be told.

For instance, I rediscovered the joy of chocolate over the holidays, and had high hopes of pursuing this as a new hobby. I also have newly sociable friends with excellent taste in cuisine who want to take me out to dinner in The City, seduce me with unpronouncable sauces, and bedevil me with spices unheard of on these pale, wan shores.

What’s more, I have brand new, high-thread-count sheets, and two fully grown cats that are yearning for me to cuddle with them in the early morning hours.

They yearn for it. As do I.

But no. Instead, I have found myself with your good intentions, your resolutions somehow, tragically, grafted onto my soul. I have been imbued with your saintly desire to be thin, to be healthy, to be strong, infecting my cells and coursing unaccountably through my bloodstream.

At what point did I fail to wash my hands thoroughly enough to avoid the scourge of these higher motives, this clarity of vision, this steely resolve?

I do not know. All I know is that my house is rapidly becoming quite eerily clean. My calf muscles are tending toward the frighteningly lean. And it is through no particular design of my own, this I can assure you.

I did not ask for this. I did not invite it in any way. I hate living well. It’s unnatural, is what it is.

I beg of you, please, send chocolate. I fear it is my only hope for a cure.

Listen, I had plans for this year. Plans that are being thrown into extreme peril by this unprecedented singleness of purpose.

If I am not extremely careful, this might turn out to be a very good year indeed.

And then where would I be?

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