Here we are

...at the beginning of a new year. I've never understood everyone's fascination with the new year, how people can look to it as though it has rejuvenative properties. The season is the same dead season and the stress of the holidays is still upon us. Things from last year are not wiped clean and are not forgotten. It is merely another beginning of another month, a carry-over of yesterday and the day before that. We still like the same things, dislike the same things, worry about the same things, and know that in reality nothing is different now from before the year changed. In this time of resolutions and great hopes we somehow lose the perspective of the continuity of time and look to this moment to make a great change in hopes that now will be different, that now will make the difference.

As for me, I can say that I love this time of year simply because it means that the holiday bullshit is over. Drivers return to normal driving patterns and shoppers return to normal shopping patterns. Strangers stop wishing me holiday greetings on every street corner and the numerous and oh-so-joyous holiday gatherings are finally over. I like this time of year because this is a re-entry into reality - what life is like before the glitz of strings of tiny lights and fat men in red suits change the community perspective of what "cheer" should resemble. Because we all know that all that egg nog-induced happiness is just a way to excuse the normal human tendencies that encourage us to be rude to our friends and pass it off as "not my problem, not my fault." It's a way for us to feel good about ourselves if for just one or two weeks out of the rest of the miserable, miserable year. Or at least a way to convince ourselves of that goodness. Meanwhile, every holiday party becomes our own to control to our leisure.

So welcome to 2006. I encourage you to donate to the homeless and starving throughout the year - because they aren't only hungry from November 15 through December 31. Lose weight all year long by exercising and eating vegetables every day. Be nice to people, especially your friends and the people you love most. Talk to people everywhere like they're someone you know. Don't be so foolish as to think that you can make decisions without checking first with the people those decisions will effect. And don't crash parties or invite others to do so either. Recycle.

Here we are - facing all the seasons and all the holidays all over again. Birthdays, anniversaries and celebrations will come again and in a year we will be back at this place...This irrelevant space in time that inevitably contains so much expectation.