That's men for you Padraig O'Morain'sguide to men's health:Long ago, one January 2nd, a senior staff member was seen standing in front of The Irish Timesoffices early in the morning apparently addressing the building.
But though he was gazing at the edifice with something approaching affection his listeners realised that he was, in fact, addressing the Lord.
"Thank you Lord," he said. "Thank you for my job in The Irish Times. Thank you for giving me an excuse to get out of the house."
He had made the mistake of taking a week off just after Christmas and was now suffering from cabin fever.
Never before had his place of work looked so inviting. It represented to him an escape into freedom. No doubt the feeling persisted for a few minutes after he stepped through the door.
Do you recognise that feeling? Did you leave the family home with joy armed with a cast-iron excuse to get away from the closeness or, for all I know, tension, of Christmas and the post-Christmas period?
This is a time of year when a new freedom seems to beckon and the future appears to open out like a bright promise.
And for that reason, not only may you be savouring your escape into the workplace but you may be also be tempted to make resolutions.
What better time than this to resolve to be better than you were last year? Perhaps you have made a list about cigarettes and booze and credit cards and working harder or working less hard, losing weight and exercising and so on.
All excellent stuff in itself, but hold on a second. Why are you making these resolutions? Is it because you feel that you are not somehow as good a person as you ought to be?
Do you feel that if you give yourself a complete makeover - probably involving less of what you enjoy and more of what you do not enjoy - you will become more acceptable as a human being?
If you were born a Catholic you might remember a time when you could get that squeaky-clean feeling by going to Confession, telling all, expressing what was called "a firm purpose of amendment", saying a decade of the rosary and going about your business.
Nowadays in order to get the same feeling you must, I'm afraid, drink still water (sparkling is too much fun), eat foods with more fibre, cut out crisps, chocolate bars and pints, get up earlier in the morning, jog in the rain and do all manner of other unfortunate things.
But are you sure you need to do all this in order to be a better person? And who says you have to be a better person? Might you just be a human being who lives his life reasonably well and who does not have to go around proving that he is a saint?
If you do find yourself under any compulsion to trade yourself in for a new you and if you've made out a list of ways to be a better person, try making out a second list.
On this second list write down some things about yourself that you can accept and that you're not going to beat yourself up over anymore. Then see how that affects your list of resolutions.
Maybe you don't need to run five miles a day to be a good person. Since you're already a good-enough person, maybe a walk at lunchtime would help keep you sufficiently fit and would be more likely to happen. Maybe you don't need to lose half a stone. Maybe a couple of pounds would do and so on.
In other words, make a distinction between resolutions based on the idea that you are not good enough and resolutions which make objective sense - like cutting out smoking.
Then drop or modify the ones that are based on the idea that you are not good enough and give your energy to the ones that make objective sense.
And enter the New Year knowing what's okay about you as well as what's not okay.
Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.