It's January 6, 2025 and it seems that the new year is aging too quickly. I was supposed to write this and publish it on the same day, one of my resolutions, to get rid of analysis paralysis.
But here we are, 7 days later (because of course, I wrote that first sentence and got stuck) and nothing's done.
And chances are it won't be published today also, but let's see what happens.
Question: why are we so gung-ho about making resolutions at the start of the year? From a planetary, evolutionary, maturity, growth, aging, time-based, or any other base of thinking about the new year, there's no real sense in the excitement. December 31st and January 1st are not special. Really, not at all.
You could make the same resolutions on February 16th, or April 20th, or December 5th, with the same energy, same bells, cakes, balloons and fireworks. Really, you could.
But we get caught up with birthdays, holidays (like Christmas), and of course, New Year's Day. These are special and there's something in the air that you may miss if you don't take the opportunity to make a wish.
We'll get to birthday's later.
I read somewhere that gym memberships go up significantly in January, and then drop off, as significantly, in February. This alone should tell you something.
But then December, with the anticipation of January is really the least productive time. But the retail stores and manufacturers make a boom. Sales are high, prices are seemingly affordable and everyone is buying stuff left-right-and-centre.
A gift for you, and one for me. One for her, and another for me. One for my friend, and one more for me. And so on. It's really an excuse to get more stuff for yourself. And you buy more stuff. It's easier to do this in December than any other month. Why, everyone is doing it, why not me?
Back to resolutions.
I have the same one every year, and I've never achieved it. The resolution is to publish an article each week. That would be 52 articles in the year.
I've never, ever achieved it.
The closest I came was in 2011 when I published 43 articles, because in August that year, I wrote 20 of them. Nine more and that would have been the single year.
So I've stopped making that resolution. If I'm going to be true to myself, it's not achievable. Really, I won't even pretend that I can make it since it's the start of the year and I understand the psychology of New Year's Day. Everything seems achievable - the weight goals, the publishing goals, the financial goal, the career goal, the meditation and personal reflection goals. On New Year's Day, we are all our own gods. Invincible.
But I cannot resist saying Happy New Year, because as rational human beings who love to record and count everything, we are measuring time. And this is a milestone, of sorts. So it's good to see what we have achieved and make plans to move towards something. We are not built to wander aimlessly through life, but to achieve, amass and collect stuff till we die. Notably stuff that can be measured.
So the New Year is a check-point of sorts. We have all aged one year and when we were at this same point last year, we said we'd do stuff and it's time to see how far along we have come with what we said we'd do.
Personally, my health check-points are OK. My career one's need constant evaluation and I don't think the annual review really helps. But it has to be done consciously and frequently. The annual cycle is too long, monthly is way better for me. So my reflection on what's going on happens very frequently and the New Year isn't special for that purpose.
And now that I am retired, my goals are very different. Life has taken on a sense of urgency since there is a very real end-point as suggested by the word "retirement." And some of my closest friends are now also visibly aging and passing away. Dying.
Smelling the roses is a real thing.
So let me stop here, and go and smell some more roses.
