The January Intake
The Department's year begins, like yours, with a surge of optimism it did not budget for. January is our busiest intake month — not for filings, which come later, but for the undertakings themselves, minted by the thousand between the countdown and the second of the month. The filings arrive in February, once the evidence is in. If you gave up your New Year's resolution somewhere in the third week of January and are only now, at some unreasonable hour, typing "quit my resolution february" into a search bar, you are not early or late; you are, in the Department's experience, precisely on schedule.
The record supports this. Intake logs show undertakings begun January 1 and last touched January 17 with such regularity that the clerk has stopped initialing the coincidence. A running program, ended at the exact intersection of dark mornings and a working alarm. A journal with four entries, the fourth reading, in full, "busy day." Dry January, concluded damply on the 24th at a birthday dinner for someone you do not even like that much.
Bulletin 12-B: Gym Memberships
The Department classifies the unused gym membership as a guilt annuity: a modest recurring payment that yields guilt monthly, compounding, with no maturity date. It is the only financial instrument known to perform better the less you engage with it. Thirty-four dollars a month is the going rate for the feeling that you might still go on Thursday. The membership knows about Thursday. It bills regardless — cancellation requires appearing in person at the facility, which the actuaries who designed the contract understood was the original difficulty.
You may discharge the resolution without canceling the membership. The Department handles guilt, not billing. One window at a time.
On the Author of Your Resolution
A resolution is a letter from a stranger who overestimated you. It was composed on December 31 by a person who was rested, lightly champagned, between all obligations, and briefly convinced the calendar was a door. That person had never met a Tuesday in your actual life. They scheduled 6 a.m. runs for someone with your commute. They bought the Spanish workbook for someone with your evenings. The Department does not fault them; it notes only that you are under no obligation to honor correspondence from persons unacquainted with the facts.
One particular is entered for the file: the stranger wrote the letter because they liked you and wanted to send you somewhere better. Bad intelligence, decent intentions. The Department processes a great deal of mail like that. None of it is binding.
Procedure for Discharge
Filing takes about three minutes, which is shorter than the resolution lasted, though not by the margin you would prefer. State the undertaking and the month it began — January is, functionally, pre-printed. Select a Cause of Abandonment from the approved schedule; the seasonal causes appear below, in roughly the order they occur. Pay four dollars, or seven for Discharge with Full Honors, which adds the commendation "Abandoned with Distinction" and a gold seal, for those whose resolutions failed at scale. You receive a certificate and a permanent number in the Public Registry of Unfinished Business, guilt computed to the day. If the matter is nobody's business, file WITHHELD and the record shows a number and nothing else.
The certificate is a satirical novelty document with no legal effect. It will not cancel the membership, restore the streak, or move a court. Refunds within 7 days, no questions asked. What it does is end the item: the failed-resolution guilt you have been carrying since roughly the 17th acquires a figure, the figure is paid, and the entry is stamped closed. If you have abandoned a resolution every January since 2019 — the Department asserts nothing; it has simply seen the pattern — each is a separate four-dollar matter, and the queue moves.