Happy New Year

While you think I may finally be joining in the spirit of things, embracing tradition, and being positive about things for once, you qre sadly mistaken.

Instead I say those words with my tongue pressed firmly in my cheek. Happy New Year, seriously? The is nothing wrong with wanting to write off a bad year, put the past behind you and forget it all, but its the hope we enter the new year with, and pressure we put ourselves under that cracks me up.

In 2010 I lost my oldest friend John Littlebury to a motorcycle accident, at the end of the year mum was diagnosed with brain cancer to reinforce her breast cancer. So as I entered 2011 I did the traditional thing of accepting mum would pass soon, but planned for a better year. However soon I would discover all this planning, hoping and promising things to ourselves is hopeless. No one could have predicted Tas dying so suddenly, Graeme to take such a decline and pass like that, and for me personally, for my mental state to reach rock bottom, almost lose my job of 11 years, and then for mums condition to fall off a cliff and for me to watch her pass kind of so unexpectedly.

All the wishes being batted around right now, there is no harm in it really. But I feel for those with so much invested in the New Year thing. Face facts, about 5% of the population will start their New Year hung over, great start. Maybe 1% of those will spend it in hospital or receiving some form of treatment, not forgetting the other poor sods who have to work through the new year in order to nurse and mother the pathetic people back to full health again.

What I am getting at here is, please don't promise yourself 2012 will be a better year, or hope for too much from it. Most of what will happen is totally out of your hands, and for those dieting, seeking new employment, or wanting to change their lives, I wish you the best of luck. But just remember, the New Year is a dawn like any other, the sun will rise, and new day will begin, and opportunity will once again present itself to us. Treat every day like a new chance, not just tomorrow, and live it like it was the last, as for quite a few, it quite literally will be their last.

Stay safe, have fun, and I leave you with my preferred greeting.... Happy New Day.... Embrace it!
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