Tag New Years

Happy Nearly New Year

Michael 4 Comments

It’s the last Monday of the year and it would be oh so easy to do a “year in review” type of post.  I wonder if that’s what this week’s daily prompts will be. The same prompt every day just worded a little different. Sort of like politics. Our politics this year were worded a little different. Mostly worded as lies. Turns out more people like lies more than truth, no matter how positive the truth might be. So yeah, but no, a year in review is off the list for today.

If not looking back, how about looking forward. I could make predictions of what 2025 will be like. But if you want to know how next year will be, you just have to visit your local shot and a beer bar and you’ll find more people than you can shake a stick at who will tell you just what’s going to happen next year. And they’ll be right because they all knew exactly how this year was going to be. I can hear them now. “Yep, I told you so” they will start. No, predictions aren’t for me.

How about I do a “best of” los of my posts from 2024? That’s perfect. Non-controversial. Non-political, non-critical of anything. Yep, we can do a best of from 2024, and um, that would be all of them. How can you pick the best? It’s like picking the best child or the best bacon. They’ll all yummy. Just like bacon.

I’m running out of ideas and if I don’t come up with something we’ll run out of Monday before I get anything typed onto the screen. What to do, what to do, what to do?

Aha! Why didn’t I think of this before? Resolutions! I’ll make my resolutions for 2025 and post them here and then you can check back with me later this year and together we’ll see how I did. And if you check back with me in March, I’ll tell you what they are. Didn’t you ever read that I don’t make resolutions in January. If New Year’s Day came later in the year, perhaps when the days are getting warmer and flowers are starting to bloom, then we can come up with some good resolutions.  Come see me when I’m not standing knee deep in used gift boxes trying to remember if they are recyclable, and when not I’m cleaning out the refrigerator of all the traditional holiday foods that everybody wanted but nobody ate.

Nope, the ideal time for New Year’s is late March, just about when spring is springing.  It’s far enough away from Valentine’s Day and Easter that we can use a holiday then. The long depressing nights are over so our resolutions can be positive and begin with “we resolve that we will do this” like the start of a real goal rather than “we will never again do that” like the opening for a bad excuse. So, resolutions are out too.

So just what should I write about? How about, I hope you all had a happy whatever holiday you celebrate. Whatever one that was I am certain it had traditions that leaned toward love and fellowship, peace and joy, happiness and more love. How about I write that I wish you the spirit of the holidays all year long until we can do this again next year.  I’ll bring the champagne.

And if you absolutely must have a New Years Resolution, try this on for size ⬇️

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Did you know there are 14 religious holidays in December and January? Do you even know 14 religions? I didn’t know any of that until curiosity got the better of me. Something they all have in common is that they when we remember something special shared with special people at a special time. Explore winter’s special times with us in our updated Winter Carol, last week’s Uplift post that we found, well,most uplifting.

Happy New Years +1

Michael 11 Comments

Happy New Year’s Day everybody. Oh, wait. Happy New Year’s Day everybody in the gold old U.S. of A! Yep, that’s what the calendar says. Oh it makes perfect sense. Because the real January 1 falls on a Sunday this year, and horror of horrors and woe to those who would dare to cheat the hardworking citizens of a day off, they “shifted” the holiday to Monday. Of course, those hardworking citizens who now have Monday off all went to work yesterday, which as we now know, was not a holiday. Right?

I’ve railed about Monday holidays before. I don’t know why I find them so distasteful, but I do. Almost as much as the insistence that if a holiday has the nerve to show up on the weekend (talk about anthropomorphizing), it owes those people who are already not working on that day, another day off sometime during the week, preferably at the beginning or end so they can benefit from multiple, consecutive days off. And then there is the worst part about it – it is system that was created by people who barely work at all, politicians(!).

I recently saw a Twitter thread started by an American visiting relatives in England that there it is “illegal” to work more than 48 hours a week. “How does anything ever get done?” queried the Tweeter. The responses ran the gamut from in same countries you don’t even think about working extra to “I work every extra second I must until I know the job is done!” (Yeah, right, and probably sucking up all the overtime possible.) When did going to work, or not going to work, become so competitive?

Look, I know it’s important to have time off and recover and refresh yourself. I also know it’s important we honor certain people and events and to that end we have anointed certain days as special, as holidays. You can have one and still have the other but you don’t have to shift the whole calendar around to accommodate- who? Certainly not everyone.

Maybe I’m just cranky already. In round figures, 2022 was basically a not so happy year. And now I’m figuring if it’s already going to start off bowing to the privileged, this year isn’t going to be any better. It shouldn’t matter to me who gets when off. I worked an entire career when even Sundays were just regular old work days, and I started work back in the day when Sundays were pretty much days off for everybody. Some fields know at some time you’re going to have to work every hour of the day, every day of the year. Not “emergency” calls or responses, but on the schedule, doing the same things you’d do on any random Wednesday.

Today, many of the rest of working humans have caught up with us although there are still a handful of people whose work emails do not end in .gov who will benefit by today’s declared holiday. If you are one of them and you feel a need to go see a movie, fly to some far-off destination, buy a head of romaine or a bottle of aspirin, listen to the radio, report a fire, or visit a friend in the hospital, be nice to the people wearing the uniforms and name tags. To them, it’s just another Monday.

I Firmly Dissolve

Michael 2 Comments
The new year is already more than a week old and I haven’t published a new post yet. I should be swiftly and severely punished for this. Or not. I pick not. I tried to write. Really I did. But I’ve been busy. I’ve been doing my spring cleaning, clearing out the herb garden, and ordering candy corn. Yeah, my chronology is a little disheveled. And I mix metaphors in my spare time too. 
 
Jan9Something I haven’t done yet this year, besides writing until today, is I also have yet to resolve anything. But hey, that’s the norm for me. I won’t even think about “New Year’s Resolutions” until sometime in March. I may not do anything then either but I will give it a good think. My resolution of years and years ago not to make New Year’s Resolutions in January (which I am proud to say I have kept quite well thank you) did not have the universal impact I was hoping for, encouraging others to likewise temper their plans for self, and often world,  improvement as each year begins. I see by delaying my first post of 2020 for 9 days I’ve gotten here too late to see many people who forged ahead with New Year’s Resolutions on January 1 adhering to those grand plans. How can I tell? Well…
  • You don’t “spend less time on social media” if you are posting to Instagram you doing things without your phone in hand.
  • “Eat healthier” is more than picking a non-GMO and gluten free beer for your weekly binge. (Is that even a thing?)
  • You do not get credit for “being nice to everybody” for adding 🤫 to end of a Twitter rant in which you call anybody a blithering idiot. (Yes, even exes and politicians) 
  • Getting up to find your remote does not mean you “take more walks.”
Surely there are some still resolving successfully even 9 days in. To you, congratulations! To the others more representative of my examples, well, at least you think you tried.
 
Look, it’s a new year and in another 357 days (leap year, remember) it will be another new year then yet another and so on and so on and so on. The only resolution you really need to make and keep is to do your best to make it to your next chance to resolve. Or not. 
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Happy Old Year

Michael 2 Comments
Movie goers who are certain they don’t make ’em like that any more, like me, often find themselves wishing for 1946 again. The Big Sleep, Razor’s Edge, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Gilda. Those were some of 1946’s bigger box office pay days. Oh yes, there was that big box office flop, It’s a Wonderful Life. 
 
Oh to relive 1946. That’s just what Sheila Page played by Joan Leslie gets to do in 1947’s Repeat Performance. In a heavily reworked version of the 1942 William O’Farrell novel, Sheila gets to relive 1946 from New Years Eve to New Years Eve. Well people had been reliving past cinematic lives for a while, particularly around the holidays, the previous year’s Capra classic being just the latest. Ah, but this one had a twist. Sheila doesn’t just watch her past life like Ebenezer Scrooge or George Bailey. Nor does she dream or imagine what a do over might get her the second time around. She gets dropped right back into her previous year with the full knowledge of the happenings of her first go at it and her plan for rewriting the script. 
 
Surely you’ve said to yourself a time or two “if I could only do that again” or “I wish I could have that day back.” Without revealing any more of the tale if you should want to see it for yourself* you probably can figure out that things aren’t going to go as planned. Obviously she didn’t live her first shot at 1946 in a vacuum and she isn’t going through version 2 alone. That’s the trouble with wishing for a redo, everyone else comes along too. Whether you want them or not. And there’s no guarantee that even if you could do your part differently that with everybody else adjusting and refining the end result won’t be the same.
 
My 2019 was not a banner year for me. If you’ve been reading these posts for a while you know that. If you are new just read the last posted kidney transplant update and you’ll get an idea of what I did on my summer vacation and it didn’t involve Disneyland. So if I had a chance to repeat this year would I leap at it? 
 
I think I’ll take a crack at revising things in the new year. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if we could dispense with today and tomorrow. I’ve already had enough of 2019.
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*The 1947 movie Repeat Performance was lost until very recently. There are plans for a DVD and BluRay release. It is currently available in Turner Classic Movie’s on demand listings. There is a newer movie of the same name from 1996 that was a completely different story, perhaps even more obscure that the one lost for 70 years. Don’t be fooled by that. In 1989 NBC released a remake of the 1947 film as the made for TV movie Turn Back the Clock starring Connie Sellecca in the Sheila Page role as Stephanie Powers. That movie should not be confused with the 1933 comedy offering Turn Back the Clock which involves people reliving past lives but they were having a lot more fun than those that came in William O’Farrell’s novel released 9 years later which became the source material for the 1947 and 1989 movies. And you wondered why I wouldn’t want to redo a year. They can’t even get redoing movies right and that stuff is made up!
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Remembering 2018 – Differently

Michael Leave a comment

This is it. The last day of 2018 is here and everybody who is anybody has published his or her year in review. So who am I to buck tradition?

Last year was, ummm, different. That’s my review in 4 words. Ummm, 5 words? Here’s how I justify that statement. Sort of.

Health: Nope, has nothing to do with kidneys, dialysis, transplants, weird diseases, or even the growing number of states falling for “medical” marijuana. Did anybody else see the first needle-less injection device was developed by a Massachusetts medical device company? Think Dr. McCoy on Star Trek type injections. Hsssss. There, you’re done. Take it from someone who routinely (as in several times a week) gets stuck with needles the size of Bic pen cartridges, this is different, in an exciting way even.

Wealth: Stocks hit record highs this year. Stocks hit record lows this year. Often on consecutive days. Wow! That’s amazing! No, that’s computers doing what they were told to do. When prices fall they are programmed to buy, buy, buy. When prices rise they are programmed to (altogether now) sell, sell, sell. And whether their clients make money or lose money, Duke and Duke get their commissions. (Extra points for identifying that reference.) In the meantime, everybody from Marriott Hotels to Under Armour’s fitness app was breached last year. According to the cyber security company Positive Technologies as reported by USA Today, “When it comes to data breaches, 2018 was neither the best of times nor the worst of times. It was more a sign of the times. Billions of people were affected by data breaches and cyberattacks in 2018 … with losses surpassing tens of millions of dollars.” Billions of people affected and it’s just a “sign of the times.” Oh if only that would be different.

CalendarEndBusiness: Sears is about to become a Jeopardy question. (This former retail giant introduced the Discover Card in 1985.) Sorry. Not news. Sears has been going out of business since the early 1990s. The big business news for 2018 that nobody noticed was that Starbucks opened a store in Jamaica. Jamaica man. In the very shadow of the Blue Mountains. If you are a coffee drinker and you aren’t familiar with Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee you aren’t a real coffee drinker (or really a coffee drinker) (or really a real coffee drinker). If you aren’t a coffee drinker but your drinking tastes run more to White Russians, you might have experienced Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee as the main ingredient of Tia Maria liqueur. Yes, Tia Maria in a White Russian, not that Kahlua stuff. Not even Starbucks house blend. That would be too different.

Food: Recalls, recalls, recalls. Lettuce was downright dangerous to eat in 2018. Sorry. That’s not my biggest story. Television ads take an interesting turn during the holiday season. I’ve noted before if you go just by what you see on TV during commercial breaks you’d think people never buy jewelry, wine, or liquor except in December and one week in February. It was a liquor ad that piqued my interest. A high end vodka pushed by a former high end actor proudly noted that it is certified Non-GMO. Excuse me, if you are drinking so much vodka you need to worry if it’s GMOed or not, you need to be drinking something different.

Crime: There were 338 mass shootings in America in 2018. There were 365 days in America in 2018. You do the math. Is it more disturbing there is a website that lists those occurrences or that there is an organization that rebuffs those numbers because the organization that generated the list includes wounded among the victims thus skewing the results? What would be different is if somebody actually did something besides generate new sympathy memes.

Should I take a stab at what 2019 will be like? Personally, I’d like to see something different. Happy New Year. Please.

 

Resolved to Not

Michael Leave a comment

If you’ve been following along with me for the past several years you know I’m in no danger of breaking my resolutions before this week is up because I won’t be getting around to making them for a few months. (See “Be It Resolved,” Jan. 2, 2012 if you don’t remember or understand.) While I think I have a perfectly reasonable self-help program going on there (even though I seem to be actually helping myself very little most of the time), most of the world has already gone out on that New Year’s Resolution limb. And many of them armed with a chainsaw.

I was enjoying reading an article on an on-line journal yesterday when a link at the end caught my eye. It was something to the effect of why you should make “non-resolutions” this year. If you consider that “to be resolved” is a quite strong statement in that one who is resolute is adamant and unwavering  about one’s decision, to make a “non-resolution” would be to plan on faltering or even failing. Which seems to be what happens to most of our resolutions anyway. This, I thought, bears some further study. Maybe.

I clicked on the link to see what the author had in mind but what he had in mind was to sell some of his books on positive thinking and I thought I was pretty positive that I could think fairly well on my own. So I thought for a while and I think I came up with something. This “non-resolution” idea just might go somewhere.

Consider what most people resolve to do in the shadow of empty champagne bottles, pork roast remnants, more sauerkraut than was really a good idea, and still more empty champagne bottles. To lose weight. To stop drinking. To eat less sauerkraut. They are negative goals and success means not doing something. And unless you are really adept like to a professional level at problem solving, you probably do set personal goals from a negative perspective. Eat less. Reduce debt. Don’t be late for work. It’s not unnatural to our thinking because it is indeed easier to not do than to do.

A self-help expert would say to be successful you must plan positively and with a specific target or goal. You don’t resolve to lose weight you resolve to eat healthier, exercise more, and lose two pounds a week over the next 4 months. No wonder nobody ever loses weight starting in January. That’s a full time job you’re taking on there. Now what if we give those “not to” abstracts some still real measurable goals? Without changing the negative of course. Eat less becomes eat three less desserts a week or eat at McDonald’s one less time a week. You’re still planning on not doing something and you’re brain is still comfortable with that. But now you have something specific to not do and if you don’t do it you meet your goal.

Sure it’s not for everybody, but maybe it’s worth a try just so you can say you didn’t break your resolution before you took down the Christmas tree.

Or. You could resolve to make your resolutions this spring. With me. When I’m pretty positive they should be made.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

Revolving Resolutions

Michael 1 Comment

For the last two years we have explained why we don’t get around to making our New Year’s resolutions until sometime in March.  No, procrastination has nothing to do with it.  Out logic is flawless.  The holiday season stretching all the way back to Halloween is just too hectic during which to make logical, sustaining, life altering decisions.  (See “Be It Resolved,” Jan. 2, 2012 in Life.)

The rule is about to have an exception.  A couple of them even.  She and He have both already resolved at least once for 2014.  He started planning changes for 2014 at the end of October.  She reached her epiphany while doing some between holiday cleaning and verbalized a resolution for next year almost before Christmas was over.  That’s when the light bulb went off, the penny dropped, and realization came into focus.  It’s never the wrong time of the year to improve oneself.

Holy resolutions! What a profound statement.  It’s never the wrong time of the year to improve oneself.  When something significant arises it would be silly to wait until March – or January – to do something about it.  And that’s another reason we’re against New Year’s resolutions at the start of the New Year.  One can’t just pick once a year to start improving.

Now there are always going to be those non-resolution resolutions.  Eat less, exercise more, stay off the couch, don’t nag, don’t drink, lose weight, gain height, avoid sharp objects, don’t insult the boss in public particularly when the boss is part of the public.  Some people just can’t make it through a New Year’s Eve celebration without spouting something seemingly profound in the cloud of champagne and confetti.  Go ahead and make those.  They are the ones that die on January 2 anyway.  (Hopefully at least the one about the boss.)

But real life changing challenges shouldn’t be restricted to one day.  It’s never the wrong time of the year to improve oneself.  Except maybe January 1.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?