Happy New Year! Do I mean it? Well, I certainly don't wish you any malice or harm, dear reader but do I mean every "happy new year" wish I have uttered thus far? Not really. I am guilty. Guilty of simply repeating the wish in such a pavlovic way that it is meaningless. I buy groceries from an adolescent at the supermarket who has been ordered to wish every customer a HNY, and I fucking well respond to this "do you want fries with that?" type of nonsense.
I hate the new year season more than Christmas, which is tedious and expensive and wholly anti-climactic as well as far too commercial; but you've heard these ramblings from many I would assume. New Year is worse though, forced to party by the masses, f
orced to kiss strangers and if not already drunk, make it appear so. If not forced to party then forced to watch some Times Square extravaganza on TV. Of course I don't mean forced in the strongest sense, more obligated by the rest of society. Any excuse for a good party eh?I know it's an ancient ritual but I am just as happy asleep by midnight on the 31st than linking arms and forgetting about the hangover I'm about to get in the morning. This year I was indeed in bed and asleep by the time Dick Clark was wheeled out, I didn't miss anything.
My other 'grinds my gears' things about new year and certainly new decades is this journalistic tendency to 'top 10' everything under the sun. I'm as guilty as the next for this as a year or so ago I did a top 10 movies, but it's subjective and I know that. My top ten will not be your top ten and it'd be a boring old world if it were. The top ten of anything from the last decade is also so stupid; everything changes and in ten years it changes completely. No comparison can or should be made.
I liked Bono's idea of top ten things he would like to see in '10 although I didn't agree with it all, at least it wasn't negatively retrospective.
Which brings me to the subject of new year's resolutions which is a bit of a contradiction as in 95% of the time they are not resolute and often get broken after the first few weeks if that.
Gym's make their money by selling memberships in January a fraction of who will certainly no where to be seen by the following December. Gym's make money off attrition; if ev
ery member were to suddenly reignite their fitness regime the lineup for the steppers and bikes would be all the way out the door. It's a bit like AirMiles or any other loyalty scheme; the billions of points that lie never to be claimed is where the 'jam' is. I digress though.I seldom make a new years resolution as I think it almost jinxes any longevity of commitment but I can't help thinking about things I've always wanted to do. Saw "One Week" a couple nights ago with Joshua Jackson playing a guy who found out he had terminal cancer and then decided to ride a motorcycle west through Canada. Great film and great message.
How simple would it be to do all the things you would want to do before you die if you knew you were going to die soon. Don't answer that it's rhetorical!No planning for the future, no worrying about finances, just do it. When you aren't on deaths door it becomes a little more complex though and people generally tend to 'spread' things they want to do through their life until something happens to put a halt to all that. Health, no money, responsibilities or even death!
The trick, therefore is to 'hedge' a little. Try to do as much as possible as soon as possible. Rather than a new years resolution to do something or stop doing something why not
think bigger and create your own 'bucket list' before it's too late and act on it as best you can?So that is my new years resolution. To put together my bucket list and start ticking them off. I also need to get over my love hate relationship with procrastination, but that's for another day, maybe next month even.
HNY
Drude
