Happy New Year!

I know. I’ve had a cold.

Being in the publishing business, I’ve been living in 2012 for a while now (I’m up to July), but I like the idea of fresh starts and New Year’s resolutions, even though most of them go the way they go. There’s a great, small Danish bakery, Nielsen’s, a block from where I work, and one day in January, two or three years ago, in the depths of the Global Financial Meltdown, as I was waiting for my mid-afternoon latte and happy-hour nosh (most likely a custard-filled snitter), I asked the barista how business was going. I was worried about them, as I was worried about all small businesses in the area. She admitted that things were pretty slow. “But they should pick up around February,” she added. Februrary? I wondered. Had she heard something I hadn’t? “Why February?” I asked. “That’s when most people give up on their New Year’s resolutions,” she said.

We are what we are. But I still like the idea of resolutions even though I don’t write down the New Year’s variety. Maybe my resolution for next year is to write down my New Year’s resolutions.

The ones floating about my head for this year involve getting serious about French again, or Chinese, which is still better than my French, or writing this or that long unfinished project, or reviewing and ranking every superhero movie or baseball movie. They involve reading more, and reading more fiction, and traveling more, and...

Unfortunately, there’s only so much time in the day. In this way, the resolutions contradict one another. They jostle one another for my attention. Me! Choose me! I doubt I can do superhero movies and baseball movies. I can’t study French and Chinese. Things get left behind. Most things. Life sweeps us along.

It’s all about time and interest. I have too little free time and too many interests. I suppose I’ll worry the year when my interests become manageable. It’ll indicate a decided lack of interest in things.

So here’s to the New Year. Here’s to the illusion that we have all the time in the world.