Thursday, January 01, 2004
Only twenty minutes left...
...of this first day of 2004. A bright shiny spanking new year lays ahead, full of promise and wonder and uncertainty. I look at the 365 days left, think about how much time that is, how this year can be better and brighter than any of the recent years that my family and friends and I have managed to survive.
In many ways the division of time is an arbitrary one, with only the marching of days and the changing of the seasons truly marking the passage of what we call months and years. But this division of time is an important one for most humans, myself included. It is a means by which we mark the occurrence of events we deem important, perhaps even life altering. How else could we tell others when we were born or married? The births of treasured children, deaths of loved ones, the loss of virginity, the destruction and reconstruction of familial relationships, or the meeting of people that would become integral to the progress of our lives, whether for good or ill - through the existence of simple sheets of paper marked with grids and numbers and letters and occasionally images (our tactile representation of the passing days and seasons), we can say, "Oh, that happened in April 1973." So much easier than saying, "That was near the beginning of ten growing seasons past."
As 2004 stretches before me, seemingly endless, I remind myself that the 2003 calendar once looked as pure and white and limitless, as did those for 2002 and 2001 and all the other years, and New Year's Eve appeared in a heartbeat, as it has before. And, with luck and perseverance, will again. In the meantime I wish for a 2004 full of light and love and miracles for those dearest to me, as well as for myself.
Do I make a New Year's resolution? Since high school I've been wary of those, yet I've always sworn that I would do what I could to be a better person by the end of the year. Exercise more, get a better job, move in with another person, be a better daughter and sister and friend and aunt. Sometimes I succeed, but more often I fear that I don't. Which means that I kick myself for failing in my goals, wondering why I'm more successful at procrastination than anything else in my life.
This year I will work on those things. If I slide back into old habits I'll do my best to learn from the sliding and get back on those horses, to move forward again. Not resolutions so much as acknowledging my own efforts, I guess. But the one thing that I do resolve this year - try to treat every day as the precious thing that it is. Try to cherish the people in my life and to let them know that, even when they may irritate me or tick me off, that they mean the world to me. It's something I try to do anyway, but I always think that I could do so much better.
I have one other resolution - that I have someone that I like to kiss when midnight on 12/31/04 rolls around. Much as I love my friends and family, several years of having no one else to kiss when the clock strikes is rather depressing. (Though not as depressing as the one year when I had no one at all to kiss. I'm never letting that happen again.)
Oh, and to leave my damn eyebrows alone until they grow back, no matter how scraggly and sad they may look.
Come to think of it, that last may be the hardest of all.
In many ways the division of time is an arbitrary one, with only the marching of days and the changing of the seasons truly marking the passage of what we call months and years. But this division of time is an important one for most humans, myself included. It is a means by which we mark the occurrence of events we deem important, perhaps even life altering. How else could we tell others when we were born or married? The births of treasured children, deaths of loved ones, the loss of virginity, the destruction and reconstruction of familial relationships, or the meeting of people that would become integral to the progress of our lives, whether for good or ill - through the existence of simple sheets of paper marked with grids and numbers and letters and occasionally images (our tactile representation of the passing days and seasons), we can say, "Oh, that happened in April 1973." So much easier than saying, "That was near the beginning of ten growing seasons past."
As 2004 stretches before me, seemingly endless, I remind myself that the 2003 calendar once looked as pure and white and limitless, as did those for 2002 and 2001 and all the other years, and New Year's Eve appeared in a heartbeat, as it has before. And, with luck and perseverance, will again. In the meantime I wish for a 2004 full of light and love and miracles for those dearest to me, as well as for myself.
Do I make a New Year's resolution? Since high school I've been wary of those, yet I've always sworn that I would do what I could to be a better person by the end of the year. Exercise more, get a better job, move in with another person, be a better daughter and sister and friend and aunt. Sometimes I succeed, but more often I fear that I don't. Which means that I kick myself for failing in my goals, wondering why I'm more successful at procrastination than anything else in my life.
This year I will work on those things. If I slide back into old habits I'll do my best to learn from the sliding and get back on those horses, to move forward again. Not resolutions so much as acknowledging my own efforts, I guess. But the one thing that I do resolve this year - try to treat every day as the precious thing that it is. Try to cherish the people in my life and to let them know that, even when they may irritate me or tick me off, that they mean the world to me. It's something I try to do anyway, but I always think that I could do so much better.
I have one other resolution - that I have someone that I like to kiss when midnight on 12/31/04 rolls around. Much as I love my friends and family, several years of having no one else to kiss when the clock strikes is rather depressing. (Though not as depressing as the one year when I had no one at all to kiss. I'm never letting that happen again.)
Oh, and to leave my damn eyebrows alone until they grow back, no matter how scraggly and sad they may look.
Come to think of it, that last may be the hardest of all.
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United States, California, Los Angeles, San Fernando Valley, English, Carol, Female, 36-40.
