2015 - This Year Intentionally Left Blank

On Dec. 31, 2013 I was very happy to see the previous year go. Like so many, we lived through unemployment, layoffs, economic hardship, and personal strife. The bad outweighed the good. We welcomed 2014 like a new beau we met and hit it off with immediately. We had a bright and happy outlook for the relationship.

For a while everything was great and there was definitely some amazing moments. Trips together, new jobs to celebrate, new ventures undertaken, an ease in the familial tensions. But then cracks in the handsome veneer began to show. Serious issues arose that were through no fault of ours. Friends close to us suffered losses, family members were seriously ill.  The perfect year turned out to be not such a great match and we parted from 2014 this past Wednesday at midnight, amicably but with no chance at reconciliation.

The idea of a fresh start is so seductive, isn’t it?  A blank canvas; a do-over;  a second chance; third time’s the charm; a new dawn; a new year. We have more terms for starting over than Inuits have for snow. Oh yeah, a blanket of fresh snow – big metaphor.

I am not sure at what point in history humans decided that first day of the year made everything you regret or didn’t enjoy in the previous 365 become dulled and you were now allowed to move on. I could probably Google it. But it is a bit random. Why not every decade? Every night?  Every week?  Declare each Sunday night a time to drink too much and wear sparkly clothes and silly paper hats. “Happy Monday! Whoo hoo, the week up to April 15^th really sucked, but it’s April 16^th! Everything will be better!”

I know why, of course. We adopted a Gegorian calendar at some point, 10 years is too long to wait for a new chance and every weekend is hard to maintain after your 30^th birthday.

So the new year it became. And if you have had a particularly awful year, it’s nice to think the door has hit last year in the ass and you don’t have to look back.

So my musing today is, why can’t we allow ourselves that second chance or that positive outlook without that date change? Why do we wait until midnight of the last day of the year to choose better habits or make changes we know we need? To not let sadness and tragedy past darken our days in the future? What magical fairy dust sprinkles with new year confetti that makes all the crappy stuff that happened to you in 2014 suddenly stop in 2015?

None, or course, no fairy dust. No planets in alignment or in retrograde. No sudden epiphany that makes you a better person or more skilled or have more willpower.

Oh, but the IDEA! The idea that we can change who we are – the parts we don’t like anyway. That we can change our situation. That we can change our world for the better.

I don’t generally make resolutions. They are only false promises to myself so I can feel less guilty about being a willpower-less schlub. But this year I resolve this: I can make it a new year at anytime. At 4:18 pm on a Tuesday in summer. Tomorrow. 17 months from now. The only thing I can’t change is yesterday. But I can change today and I can affect the future. To quote a mentor of mine, Marla Cilley, “Jump in where you are.' You do not need the permission of a paper calendar to make your life happier, better or easier.  The calendar does not care. It will just hang there, letting you write on it, either way. I wouldn’t trust it with life advice.

It might be a tough journey to get to that next step, but you can start when YOU want to. And end up at the end much earlier than if you wait for the next new year.

Happy new year. Make it a good one. Regret seeing it go.