A New Year
It’s probably a sign of advanced age, but where in the world did 2023 go? Seems like it just started…and now the calendar reads 2024.
In an effort to be more organized a year ago, I had purchased a few dollar-store calendar planners for use with specific projects. I found two of them in a desk drawer last week…still pristine, not a pencil mark in them. Painful reminder of those two projects that didn’t get off the ground yet another year. Apparently, every time I saw them during 2023 I held out hope they might be needed. They landed in the recycle bin just after Christmas.
One thing I liked when I was a college student, and later as a college professor, was the fact that no matter what, the semester would end…and if any projects were left undone, it was too late once the final grade was posted. That was by definition a twice-yearly fresh start.
But in the real world, just because the calendar now says 2024 doesn’t mean those things left undone at the end of 2023 went away.
That’s certainly the case in world affairs and politics. War still rages in Ukraine and the Middle East. We still don’t have a federal budget for the fiscal year, which today began month 4…of only 12. Two weeks from today, the Iowa Caucuses will be held…old carryover news from 2023, but for the rest of the nation, the first step of a year-long process.
2023’s unfinished home projects have now become 2024’s continuing sore spot. And just because the Iowa football game today is in 2024 doesn’t mean the team magically found a high powered offense to separate it from 2023’s woes.
But yet it is a fresh start, if you want to look at it that way. No, not with making broad and therefore meaningless resolutions that you will break before the Christmas decorations are put away. But the concept of a fresh start and fresh attitude is appealing.
My shiny new 2024 calendar planner is proof. We’ll see if my handwriting remains legible in it longer than it did last year, when I intended to have discernible words replace scribbles.
And in a bit of optimism, I do have a couple of those dollar-store calendar planners in my desk drawer…just in case this year is the year for those projects I have in mind.
