IT’S only mid-January and I’m sick and tired of new year’s resolutions already.

This would be an utterly unremarkable sentiment if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve made none myself.

The last time I made a new year’s resolution was in 2013, when it seemed high time to master the art of making a delicious Martini. This ongoing project continues to deliver rewards and requires no willpower.

But all around me are people trying to form life-enhancing habits which require a lot of willpower. I find their good intentions interfere with my own long-established, life-as-it-is ones – plenty of which contribute to my well-being and, I would argue, extend that benefit to others.

The life-enhancing pleasure of making and drinking a really good cocktail diminishes, though, when half the people who would normally reap those rewards with you are having a ‘dry’ January. I also have a long-cultivated and much-valued habit of cooking meals with a variety of ingredients, some of which are white and contain carbohydrates. I would wager too that many of the meals which contribute most to my sense of well-being contain more than 500 calories.

Upholding this fine habit of cooking and eating delicious foods is fraught with complications now that one daughter has gone off ‘white’ carbohydrates for the week and the other has gone on a five-two regime (two days of fasting, eg 500 calories max).

Surely life is diminished, not enhanced, when the humble jacket potato with beans and cheese is put on the no-no list.

Should I appear averse to habits more traditionally understood as health-giving, let me say that here, too, the resolutions of others, made with tipsy solemnity over a glass of champagne at midnight on December 31, are also annoyingly obstructive to long-established routines of my own. Every January, gym classes I have been attending for years with boring regularity are suddenly crammed full of strangers. Having to jostle for a space is one thing, but sometimes there are so many on that new-year-new-me kick that the class is fully booked. I suppose it would be churlish to suggest a seniority system whereby those who have attended the class for the longest time have first priority.

So I’ll have to be patient. But not very – after all, habits take a long time to form. And if they don’t feel life-enhancing to the one forming them, they won’t last.