Happy New Year…if you’re into that sort of thing. I am usually not, in fact I would love for it to be just another turn of the calendar, so that we can be rid of the self-defeating notion that by simply wishing to be better, healthier, slimmer, more well read and/or having climbed more mountains, it will happen.

But it comes around every year so best to just get it over and done with.

I think this opening makes me sound a lot more miserable than I am.

The heavy snow we had a few days ago turned to ice but now it is slowly disappearing. The sad and lonely little olive trees we rescued from a dry, fluorescent-lit death in the supermarket have been repotted and are sheltering from the winter on the porch. We are still locked-down and I haven’t seen The Kid since before Christmas, but we also live in an age of wonder and to see her face and hear her voice is just a matter of pushing a button, which is really F’ing amazing when you think about it.

Best of all I spent a very happy couple of hours yesterday in my comfy armchair…(re-)reading a work of fiction. It is the first for many, many months and yet the act of reading still settles into my brain like feet slipping into enormous woolly socks. Thank you Mr King.

The potentiality of this new year seems weighted somehow. Maybe it’s heavy with expectations, or trepidation, or maybe I’m just desperate to not be disappointed in my fellow human beings any more. But it is still there, the idea that things can change. Not that things can go back to ‘normal’ but that maybe this year’s resolutions will be realistic, come with a plan and be what we actually need, rather than be what we are told we should want.

That would be nice…for a change.

(Featured image from Unsplash.com)