As this new year begins, you will start to notice some changes. The gyms will be full, some of your friends will be trying to quit unhealthy habits, and others will be attempting to just be better people in general. I know last year, my husband decided he would stop smoking cigarettes, or at the least, cut back. New Year resolutions always seem to hit full force and then fizzle out. So why do people try to eat better, live healthier, and cut back on “bad” things in the first place?

Is it because smoking, being overweight, or – hell, even cursing – are considered social stigmas? For as much as society loves to “live for the day” and “do what feels good” there is a part that still frowns upon it all and makes people feel guilty for having done so. Wow, that was a pretty lengthy sentence! It makes my point though.

Vices have always been around. The term, vice, is defined as an immoral or wicked habit. Now that makes me think of playing with Voodoo dolls, stealing money from the elderly, or beating a puppy. Or even stealing puppies and beating the elderly with Voodoo dolls. Oh! Or stealing elderly Voodoo dolls… Okay, you see what I mean. A vice can simply be a bad habit. I describe it as something on which a person relies to get through his or her day.

I started to wonder if everyone has vices. Do I even have one? I don’t smoke, or drink, or punch babies. I asked one of my guy friends at work, and he said he has plenty. I asked him to name them. He said they are all the same; they’re orange and he bought them from Sears. To which I told him no, not vises… Vices. He then said doughnuts. Sure, doughnuts can be bad if one eats enough of them. They certainly are not healthy.

If we go by how unhealthy something is, then there are a lot of vices in the world. I mean, wearing tight jeans isn’t healthy, so that’s a vice. Drinking four cups of coffee a day or a lot of sodas isn’t healthy, so those are vices. Pushing on a newborn’s soft spot isn’t good for the baby’s health, so that’s a vice. I guess wearing loafers without socks in the middle of winter isn’t healthy either… so that would be a Miami Vice. Yes, I went there. Not to Miami, but to that joke – you know you liked it.

Let’s go back to my first point. Some habits are socially frowned upon. For example, maybe a woman doesn’t like wearing a bra, so she “free-boobs” it every chance she gets. While men would love to see this, there are many uppity women that find this appalling. Truly they are just jealous that they don’t have the guts or confidence to show off their naturally made mounds, but that doesn’t keep them from bitching about it. Smoking is another socially unacceptable vice as well. I remember growing up and going to malls that had ashtrays every twenty feet. If you didn’t like the smoke, you found another place to stand. Today, smoking is banned from almost every public place, and if one smokes around someone else, the smoker is considered a dirty cancerous leper. I don’t know any smokers, however, that refrain from smoking in public due to others’ opinions. It’s such a vice, that they’ll do it no matter what.

Just because something is unhealthy or pisses someone off, doesn’t automatically make it a vice. There is a qualifier that must accompany one of those two. That, of course, is that the action has to be alluring enough to the person to not want to stop. So, for example, I like to mow my lawn in the nude. My neighbors are offended because the sun reflects off my alabaster ass and blinds them. I find mowing the lawn while I’m nude, alluring and down-right addictive for the following reasons: it’s cooler, there aren’t any sweaty clothes to wash, the little pieces of grass whirl past my bare skin and it tickles. Therefore, mowing in the buff is a vice for me. Okay, I’m kidding about that… The neighbors don’t mind at all.

Eating bacon and drinking coffee are also my wicked habits. Is it a bad thing that people have “crutches” that they rely on to get through the day? I’m not going to feel bad about it. I’m not going to make a resolution,for this new year, to quit eating bacon. Good grief! That would be ridiculous! Every person has a vice. Think about it. From smoking to chewing gum, almost anything can be a vice. Companies even make money off of selling programs or products to help us quit. So in many ways, our bad habits boost the economy. Hmmm… I wonder if there are cigarettes that can make someone quit chewing gum.