If you are anything like me, you are surrounded by people who are trying to make you improve yourself. This morning my mom said, “Hey Pete, have you thought about, maybe, moving out sometime this year?” And just last week, my ex-girlfriend sent me a letter stating, “My client asserts that you owe her grandfather $350. You used said money to buy new stereo equipment for your 1991 Ford Tempo.” Self-improvement is for fat people, prisoners, alcoholics and religious folk, not for the rest of us. Here’s how to sidestep any New Year resolutions you might be forced into making.

1) Point out, to yourself and others, how thin you are.

2) Inform the people telling you to improve that they aren’t that great either…MOM.

3) Bargain for rehab. If today’s young Hollywood has taught us anything, it’s that the commitments one makes in 12 step programs are easily broken.

4) Instead of wasting your time on resolutions, start your own six-step self-help guides that you publish monthly on a web magazine.

5) Pack up your Tempo and go to Reno for three weeks without telling anyone. When you get back and people ask where you’ve been say, “I felt that I needed to volunteer at an orphanage in Ecuador to realign my chi.”

6) Make up a statistic that links self-improvement to unhealed acne scars.

Soon you’ll be back in the basement with your 8-bit gaming system listening to vinyl Tesla albums.

Good luck and I’ll see you in the record store.

Mixtape Master Pete.