A New Year

It is interesting to me how much value we put into certain divisions. Weeks start and end, turning into months and seasons that change without much notice, until the Earth has gone around the sun another time and we take a moment to look around and see what the past year has wrought, and to plan how much better this New Year will be. Most people get two chances a year at this--the start of the calendar year and their birthday, but for me these days are so close together as to blur into one another, creating my own special liminal time.

At these times, if just for a moment, we clean the slate of our lives and contemplate the better person we want to be--thinner, healthier, more in shape, better read, better committed to our inner dreams than our every day realities. But those every day realities do not vanish in the light of the New Year, nor does our ability to balance all that we want to do with all that we need to do take a quantum leap forward.

I started this blog New Year's Day 8 years ago, and though it's suffered from severe neglect in recent years, I am hoping to recommit myself to writing, which should mean at least a few more entries here. I am annoyed to see that I already did my idea for making note of what was new in my life looking back at the past year, since while it shows that it is a good idea, it also highlights how easy it is to lose site of our good ideas.

I've been trying over the years to do those self-improvements more incrementally to mixed success. But, at least in the glow of the New Year, I believe I can commit to working on who I want to be in an every-day sort of way. It is in the dawn of each new day and our falling asleep at its end that all the magic happens. It is easy to lose sight of this after endless meetings and tight deadlines and struggling with the ridiculousness of computer technology, but really that is all there is. It's all the same thing, and only a holistic approach will get you where you truly want to be.

Happy New Year!