AULDLANGWHYNE

Here I sit, December 31, 2008. Another opportunity to mark another year past, another anniversary, another assessment day.

How I hate New Year’s Eve.

Maybe I am becoming Crusty McCrusterstein. I seem to have grown to hate all holidays now, mainly because they prevent the mail from coming and force me to do things I don’t want to. I don’t want to roast a turkey, I don’t want to blow my hand off with a firecracker, I don’t want to buy toys for children who will just say, “Is that all?” I don’t want to go to church, I don’t want to carve a pumpkin and scoop out all those disgusting guts, I don’t want to drink crappy sour champagne and toast the fact that I completely remember exactly what I was doing a year ago today, and it has been A WHOLE YEAR since then, and feel the substantial weight of each of those 365 days on my shoulders.

There are so few of us who can say they used their year well, to their best abilities, that they used this utterly precious time productively and positively. Instead, most of us watch too much terrible TV, eat and drink too much or too poorly, bicker endlessly with family, friends, and co-workers, worry about things too much, worry not enough about other things, do too many things because it seems expected, keep jobs that make you feel dull and sad, drive too fast, and repeat endlessly until another New Year’s Eve rolls around and some putz asks you, “So, what are your New Year’s resolutions, huh?” My immediate response would be, “I resolve that you should SHUT UP.” Ah, that would feel so good, like a long cool drink of water. Ahhhhhhhhhh.

Resolutions are lame. Do or do not, but don’t set up some yearly hurdle that really has no meaning other than a calendar date. This is why these things fail so much; there is nothing driving the change other than January 1st and by the time it gets to be about March, who cares about a new year anymore, and you fall back into your old ways. Change is internal, and not based on someone’s else’s clock. Only you know when you can do it.

I did two things this year that took a fair amount of effort and focus. I got my health back by getting and staying on the treadmill, and I started writing this daily blog. For me, these are good and important steps in improving my lot as a Space Taking Resource Sucking Human. Oh, but it is so not enough. And the time passes and it’s New Year Eve and I am made to think by Old Father Time that I have, essentially, wasted another year. Fuck you, OFT, you bastard. I know I should not listen to him and I should appreciate the good things I have accomplished, that I have given. But I am not immune to his crackling whispering rasp, telling me “You failed, and one of these days I will bring my pal the Grim Reaper with me, and you will have no more years.”

You see why I feel a little testy today. Heh.

So I am not going to make any damn resolutions, not going to say I am just going to do my best, not going to start the stop watch on something when I know that each individual life is so ridiculously complex, so intertwined with the choices and decisions of everyone else out there, you just can’t really know what the hell is going to happen in a year. I can yap all confident to everyone YAS YAS I AM GOING TO DO THIS AND THIS AND THIS AND GO HERE AND BLAH DEE BLAH, but really. I might and I might not. Baby New Year could very well have explosive diarrhea, colic, and caustic drool. The only thing that I can try to do, day by day only, is stay truthful to myself and stick to what I think is valuable, and real. That is no resolution. It is necessity, and is sometimes incredibly difficult.

So to you all, all you friends and family and strangers out there all over the world, I wish for you the most pleasant, adorable, healthy, cherubic, and above-average Baby New Year ever. I’ll take a seat right over here.