Every January as I’m signing up for the gym, I feel the need to tell the person at the desk that I’m not one of those people who sign up as a short-lived New Year’s resolution. I get the urge to explain that I play capoeira year-round and that I normally run outside and am only coming to the gym now because it’s cold and icy. I want to let that guy at the desk know that if I do happen to stop showing up, it will likely be because I am traveling somewhere or because the weather got warm, not because I bailed on a New Year’s fitness resolution.

‘Oh man, we been full on,’ the guy at the counter says to the other guy coming on shift today as I stand there filling out my registration forms. ‘New Year’s rush. We signed up 88 people since yesterday.’

I resist the urge to launch into an explanation about how that isn’t my situation. I stop myself from casually informing him that if he’s assuming I’m one of the New Year’s resolution people, he is wrong.

I doubt he really cares. And really, what does it matter to anyone other than me?

I do my time on the treadmill and watch other people doing their gym thing. I start wondering how many of the statistics that we collect in our jobs in aid or development or public health or education aren’t really what we think they are. But I also start thinking about how we all believe that somehow our own little stories and motivations matter in the larger scheme of things.