A Long December

Before we begin, I regret to inform you that several of the world’s most powerful nations, including the United States, failed to register and certify the change in year from 2020 to 2021 as required by an obscure and largely ceremonial international law. As such, 2020 continues, and today is December 42nd.

The sad part is that the way the last year has gone, that statement almost makes you want to double-check.

But hey, you beautiful human, you made it! Good job!

At the end of most years, I play a particular song: A Long December by Counting Crows. It’s a song that in it’s gloomy, mid-90’s way laments the failures and missed opportunities of the past year while expressing hope that the coming year will be better. As I got home from work on the morning of December 31, the clock running out on 2020, I felt the earth move from a collective sigh of relief. And in the days to follow, there were so many signs of hope, enough to cut through the fear and trepidation of the next few weeks.

We’re almost there, y’all.

2020 was an undeniably brutal year, and I’m not so cruel as to recap it for you. I don’t have the space to do that, anyway. But the turning of a page, the changing of a number doesn’t automatically make time—a day, a week, a year—better. And it doesn’t make it a better time.

For a lot of years, I said that next year would be the year I do a lot of things. Travel, publish, skydive, whatever. It was always next year. The last 10 months has shown me that time is a construct, and all that next year talk was just sanctioned procrastination. I’d like to change that, and I’d like that we all did too.

I can see the irony of that statement coming in 11 days into the year, like I haven’t been procrastinating. Epiphanies happen when they happen.

Anyway. I hope to hear from you all soon. Happy New Year.

Maybe this year will be better than the last.