In Just a Few Days: Something New

Buon giorno. This is a small sequel to yesterday's article about getting things prepared in your home and in your mind for the New Year. (Hopefully, Blogger won't do me over again and skip the scheduled publishing date for this part! I'm irritated, you see.) The other section was about making certain preparations, and I want to suggest one more to help you gear up mentally: Something new.

That's right, you heard me.

"What 'new' stuff, Cowboy Bob?"

Oh, Ernie the Gambler is chiming in this time. Where's Nicky?

"Out getting booze for the crew's party!"

Sure, he doesn't forget that. Not exactly what I have in mind for "something new", but it fits in with yesterday's post where people get things all lined up before the deadline.

No, I'm suggesting that people get themselves a kind of New Year's present. (Or give someone a New Year's gift, that'll baffle them!) Nicky likes to have a new shirt on January 1, Hal the Hacker starts using a new cologne from St. Charles Shave, Rowdy Ralph gets a new coffee mug, Tommy the Knocker gets a new nightstick from the cop surplus store, Billy the Baptist (how he got that name, I still don't know) gets a new music CD. Well, that's the general idea.

Me, I like the new shirt business. Plus, I take a New Year's shower —

"Whether you need it or not!"

Great, you're back, Nicky. Now clam up.

I take the shower to figuratively wash away the bad stuff from the previous year. Like I said, I'm into the symbolic and psych stuff. And that's pretty symbolic, capice? New razor blades, too. Not a new cologne for me this year.

Anyway, I think I made it clear, even to the paranoid Norman types out there, that I think it's good for you to get something new and break it out for its first use on January 1. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to settle the crew down.

In Just a Few Days

Buon giorno. Today is Wednesday, December 28, in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven. This tired old year is almost over, thank God.

Over the past few years, I have taken an interest in New Year's Day. For years, it was always "just another day", and I admit that I still have some elements of that attitude even now. I am not interested in staying up until midnight and pretending that some kind of magic happens, capice?

Street iron work clock by Jon Sullivan

No, the part that interests me is psychological. We can use the New Year to our advantage. All the hurrying, hustle and hassle of the Christmas season is pretty well behind us. Aside from taking down the tree and packing away the decorations (I wish them well, them what needs must take down the exterior illumination), we are on the path to getting back to our routines that have been frequently interrupted as of late.

Why am I writing like an intoxicated Victorian Englishman? Anyway...

If you are fond of making New Year's resolutions, fine, go for it. (But wise people have said not to do more than two of them, because people try too hard to remake themselves. Once you get those established, pick two more to begin at the first of the next month. Repeat as needed.) I do believe in setting goals because the first of the year works out well for target dates. Oh, and get a decent planner, notebook, online calendar system or whatever so you can write things down.

But there's something else that I want to point out: Clutter. Taking a page from the Tibetans, I think it is a good idea to have things tidied up before the first of the year. Do some cleaning, get the filing done, pay leftover bills, subscribe to blogs in your reader, unsubscribe to blogs you're not really looking at anymore, send out checks (I'll e-mail you my address if you want to send me money), repair that cabinet that should only take a half an hour anyway but you keep putting it off, find or replace your Bible so you can renew your commitment to daily reading, deliver those things you want to donate to the Salvation Army, take out the trash — getting those little things done ahead of time can feel very good.

One thing I'm toying with is scanning my science-related postage stamps to use for illustrations in my articles — beginning next year.

The Tibetans do not want anything going out of the house, neither money nor garbage. Their reasons are based in superstition and custom, but I can see the psychological appeal of avoiding loss. It's like programming your mind and setting a pattern. It could be worth a try.

At any rate, I wish you well in your clearing out and cleaning up in preparation for 2012.

Fading Friendships

Buon giorno. I hope you all had a good Christmas. This article is not going to be about Christmas, but I wanted to discuss some thoughts that were triggered during Christmas card time. This will be a bit rambling and disjointed; I'm not trying to say much of anything, really.

In early 2010, I was examining Minimalism, and receiving some sense of liberation by uncluttering stuff in my life. But — what about removing people?

Christmas has been a bit rough for us the past couple of years because of deaths, illnesses, injuries, depression and other things that I will not elaborate on. I was not enthused when it came to writing out Christmas cards. Going down the list of names added to the difficulties. My father was a pastor, and we did not stay put much because the Untied (misspelling intentional) Methodist denomination seldom lets people stay put for more than a few years (I think the five years I spent in Lansing, Michigan were the longest I lived in one area while I was with my parents.) My parents made many friends in several churches. Some of those churches were tiny, some had hundreds of members. Anyway, they exchanged Christmas cards with some of those people for decades.

When you only hear from someone once a year so you can exchange obligatory cards, what good is it? I had resolved not to let that kind of thing happen. Either friends I had made along the way and I cared enough about each other enough to stay in touch, or we didn't. Well, duh. That is, if all we did was the once a year thing, but no contact in the in-between times, were we really friends, or not? Those promises made to always stay in touch, to always remain close, to be there for you...

E-mail muddies the stream even further. You can stay in touch in a way by sending links, jokes and things, sending group mailings, sending your written thoughts, but I do like to send some thing physical to certain people. So, the e-mail thing is not the issue here, capice?

Sure, people get busy or have problems and maybe they couldn't do much in the past year. But when it continues, it's time to consider letting the people from the past remain in the past. Why send them a card when we're not keeping in touch in other ways? I feel that I'm prolonging the inevitable fading by obligating them to reciprocate.

Looking at the list, remembering people and how we were close. And sometimes agonizing over the memories and feelings, should I just drop it? Cut them off? It's one thing when a friendship turns sour and it really does end, or if someone just stops communicating with you for unknown reason and you're pretty sure they're done with you. But the fade away aspect seems harder to me.

Anyway, there's no hurry to trim people from our lives. Although I could not get past my personal issues and deal with sending cards (almost none were sent), I can look at the list another time, when there is no time or emotional pressure. Trimming people out of your life, "minimalizing" — is it worth it? Is it necessary? I think it might be, to clear up mental and emotional clutter. I'll find out.