Back in the Saddle Again

And we're back. Like a favorite Talking Heads song repeats to great effect, "same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was." This week is indistinguishable from the previous week. The sun doesn't shine brighter, the job market hasn't recovered, the news still drones on about insurgencies and coups. What is it we expect at the turn of a year? Time, as Einstein would tell you, is the manufacture of man and as such has nothing to do with anything. Why, then, do we anticipate the new year and hold off on making changes and improvements to coincide with the essentially meaningless milepost? Well, I am glad you asked.

I know why we celebrate the new year the way we do. It is us clinging to the anticipation that things will get better, things will change. That yacht you always wanted? Bling! Here it is! That new physique you have been talking about? You are only two sit-ups away from a six pack. We anticipate and hope for change. I surmise we even make up what January 1st is going to be like in our heads just as a child anticipates a pony beside the Christmas tree on the night before. We will wake in our new mansions, dress in our fine new clothes which accentuate our new fit bodies and head to the club to revel in our circumstances with our new friends.

Inevitably, January 1st comes and goes like any other day on a calendar and this is only the first of many letdowns we will face. We wake up in our own beds, often not feeling too well from the way in which we celebrate in anticipation of our immediate and widespread life changes. We awake with our own bodies and our own spouses. the cracks on the ceiling that were there in the old year are there in the new. Nothing but the calendar has changed. Immediately the slow decline of our hopes and dreams begins.

And so it is with me this year. I scarcely wanted to verbalize my resolution, not because I don't think I can achieve it, but because it will take time. And to most people, instantaneously is too late. I don't want people staring at me expectantly wondering where my brass ring is. So, I'm keeping it to myself. The first step to being a sharpshooter is to not let anyone know what you were shooting at. I will plod toward my unspoken goal as time and energy and luck and provenance permit, absent the exterior pressures of expectation. In the end, only I will report on my satisfactory progress to that end... or not.

I used to quit smoking every year. It lasted for all of one day, partly because I smoked so much on New Year's Eve that the thought of a cigarette on the following day was enough to bend me over. Also, I would proudly tell everyone that I was quitting and I would be met with a resounding, "yeah, right!" This is not the kind of support I needed and I failed. Until one February when I arbitrarily said... OK, it's time.

Maybe by removing the grandiosity and spectacle of resolving to improve on something you give it power and make it more real, more personal, more achievable. I hope so and that is my intent.
As for being back in the saddle? It is so far the same saddle on the same horse with the same loping movement and the same backdrop fading behind me at the same pace as before. This year, I'm not going to consider that a failure. You should not, either.