Happy Old Year(??!)
Getting through life day to day can sometimes be difficult.
Completing a full cycle of 365 of them really does feel like a personal accomplishment.
It often seems like there are far more 'uphills' to climb in life than 'downhills' or even 'plateaus'.
A typical year usually includes economic challenges and the occasional vehicle or home repair, as well as a normal cold or flu, and the bad news/good news coming at us wherever we go now. With each year, we realize that our bodies are no longer at their peak and we now attend more funerals than weddings. Our friends become fewer but more cherished. We find ourselves driving past old haunts to see if they still exist or have been replaced by yet another Walgreens or CVS. We wonder more often about 'whatever happened to good ol' fill-in-the-blank?' We perform our jobs knowing that there are guys twenty-five years younger making a few dollars less who can't wait for us to break a leg or give up or keel over. We stare in disbelief at the growing clump of gray hair on the shower drain, and we wonder how we missed the gypsies sneaking in and switching the cute little bundle of joy for this tall, sullen young man hidden in an extra-large black hoodie.
More random difficulties can be divorce, major health issues, deaths of loved ones, career crises, and expensive home emergencies.
Add to all of this a very polarizing political campaign and the beginnings of what could be a recession.
And at the end of the year, what does the media almost demand that we do?...
They want us to relive it.
The year in politics. The year in sports. Hollywood deaths in the past twelve months. Biggest movies. Best and worse TV shows. A look back at the Olympics. Natural disasters in the past year. Weather records. Bushisms. The big local stories. The companies that have left town over the past twelve months. Weirdest stories of the year. Miracle pets. Greatest moments in local look-back-at-the-past-year's-greatest-moments shows.
I hate it. I avoid looking. I don't want to read about it, I don't want to watch it, I don't want to talk about it at work or at home or over the backyard fence.
I lived it! It only took 12 months! The most distant day of 2008 is less than a year ago! I really don't need to look back, because I'm still dealing with a lot of the same problems that cropped up in those 12 months, and some that cropped up in the 12 before that, and several from the 12 before that one.
I'd rather look forward and hope that things improve, rather than look back on failings, deaths, ineptness, and tragedies.
I won't be watching the news for the next week or so, and I won't be reading the newspapers.
I just want to look at the bottom line on my Form 1040, hope that it's just a little bigger than last year, slap my son on the back and tell him we made it through another one, and be glad neither of us is dead or in jail.
Just to save time, please forward this message to late December of 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012......
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