Notes for New Year’s Days

1. If Strauss had a holiday, this would be it.  Classical radio can’t play enough Strauss on New Year’s Day.  I’m not a big fan of marches and fast and furious waltzes, which seem to be Strauss’ milieu, so waking up to the gung-ho classical bandleader at my bedside is a bit of a damper on the day right there.  Note to self: disable the radio auto-on next New Year’s Eve. It’s not like people are at the office tapping their watches and awaiting my arrival…this is a free day for whatever we want to do/be/see.  (Debussy.  Yes, that would be a better musical choice for today. See what I did there?) Whatever we decide to do on this day, let’s revel in the freedom of it–and choose our playlists wisely.

2. It seems to me that the first day of a new year is a happy occasion, and happy occasions require cake.  I suggest a slice of fruitcake. Grab one of the slices out of the freezer that you individually cut up and stored during Christmas, plate, reheat in the micro with a pad of butter, slap a candle on it and wish yourself a Happy New Day.  Eat the cake and enjoy.

3. Because Americans have created an imbalanced holiday calendar and we cram many holidays into the end of our year, we also cram most of our crap eating into the last few weeks of the year as well.  So, today is NOT the day to get on the scale and expect that the accumulated caloric intake of cocktails and Chex mix and cookies and Christmas cheer will make us weigh less.  Let’s just be clear: today is still celebratory! Sugar crashes and crazy diets and self flagellation are for TOMORROW.

4.  Okay, so I already did a crazy diet during the holiday this year and actually lost weight (give or take the two pounds I keep gaining and losing. Damn Chex mix and fruitcake.) between November and December. So today I’m taking time to remember the things I achieved last year.  Not perfection. I’m not joining Overachievers Anonymous or anything, but before I get all into goals and resolutions and gearing up for the marathon of personal improvement for this year, I am going to breathe in and thank myself for keeping mostly on track with some healthy and wise decisions that made my life a bit better at the end of last year.

5. Music is a staple for me.  I use music to get me out of bed (not you, Strauss), and it helps me focus or keep motivated or
celebrate.  Each year I pick a new theme song that reminds of who I am or what I’m learning about myself or my world.  Then, I wear the living daylights out of that song for a whole year: I scrapbook the lyrics, use snippets in conversation, whistle the melody while at the grocery, post gleanings from the song and parallels to my life of Facebook, play the song WAY too loud on repeat while I drive and sing aloud at the top of my lungs.  By the end of the year, I am ready for a new song…and trust me, so is everyone else. Find yourself a theme song for the year–and make it your own so that by the end of the year that song isn’t just a theme, it’s a tune intertwined throughout your days in good ways.

6. I like to use New Year’s Day to embrace my personal dichotomies.  For example: I woke up this morning with crazy bedhead.  While my hubs thinks this is adorable, the rest of humankind would prefer I run a comb through the blonde wilderness.  I didn’t.  I washed my face and brushed my teeth and put my untamed locks in a hairband and moved on to fruitcake and writing.  Alternately, I am very organizationally focused and task oriented.  I like to get things done.  A favorite phrase of mine forever has been “chop-chop”, so much so that my friends thought that “chop-chop” was a thing before it was a thing. “Messy haired task master” is a dichotomy about myself that I can embrace because it makes me me–and that is a nice thing to reflect upon today as I start a New Year–that being me isn’t perfect, but there is no better way to have a great year than being fully oneself.

7. There are fewer attitudinal changes that have made a greater difference in my life than gratitude. When my hubs ignored my very insistent response that I wanted nothing to do with breakfast today and made me medium boiled eggs anyway, I was thankful.  It’s the little things, really.  For many people, today is one of football.  For me it’s a kick back day of reflection and refreshers about what works.  Gratitude works, because it reminds me of all the ways the universe is going well, and all the ways that people are awesome–mostly little ways, sometimes extremely trivial ways–but focusing on those keeps my head in the positive–and being in the positive means there’s less negative energy blocking my creativity and productivity (chop-chop!).

8.  Today as I walk away from making the bed with my tangled hair in a messy bun and head up to write when Ishould be finishing a proposal or cleaning up the dishes from breakfast, I am reminded of my new tongue-in-cheek word for myself: non-compliant.  An older woman told me a story about how her doctor was unhappy with her because she hadn’t been taking her medication, labelling her “non-compliant”.  I remember giggling a little, thinking of how so many people would have slapped that label on me over the years. It brought to mind a cartoon called the Far Side by Gary Larson in which a whole group of penguins is milling about, looking all the same and indistinguishable from each other.  In the middle, this one penguin pops up

and starts singing “I gotta be me! Oh I just gotta be me!” There are days when everything around me–the work, the responsible eating, the scheduled exercise classes, the right thing to say, the matching shoes–looks like penguins, each indistinguishable from the throngs of every other correct and compliant thing we are supposed to do everyday so we can live healthier, longer, happier lives.  But for me, sometimes–okay, many times–happiness is a bit of non-compliance.  Sometimes a spot of joy comes in sneaking a bite out of my husband’s chicken sandwich before I give it to him, or saying the unexpected thing rather than the uninspired thing, or wearing the crazy cute sandals that are seriously impractical, or buying the furry pink puffball of a stuffed elephant from the kids section of the store that I passed on my way to get new organizers because I just want to squish him and name him Flufferguson and sit him on my very organized desk while I work.  Non-compliance can be liberating and joy-inducing–because sometimes during the year we just have to stand up to the monotony of “doing everything right” and break out into our own crazy song.

9. Sometimes what’s old is new again.  We see January 1 on the calendar every 365th day, and yet when it comes back around, we welcome it back with that picture of a new baby in a nappy, smiling and holding the new year in its chubby baby hands.  I like old stuff.  I buy funky antique pieces that don’t go with anything and end up cobbling them together with something new.  I’ve always hung out with old people because they have great stories and don’t care what others think anymore.  Many of my friends have given up old stuff–like actual TV’s for streaming shows on their laptop, and on our way to dinner last night one of our friends said that they can’t just watch TV–they have to do something while they watch TV.  And then there are my overachiever friends who often tout that they don’t watch TV or even own a TV.  I have friends who relegated printed books with covers and spines and paper to the olden days when Kindles and e-books became prevalent.   Call me old school–or old–but when friends tell me they don’t read actual books anymore, I tell them I gave away my Kindle Paperwhite because I never finished a single book I bought on that thing.  I buy and read actual books with paper pages. I listen to the radio every single day.  I curl up in bed and intentionally watch network TV on an actual TV set.  For more than one hour at a time. (Pop culture is important, dear overachieving friends…) Oh sure, I tweet sometimes and understand how SaaS works and buy my books on Amazon, but in the new year, it’s nice to remember the old paths that brought me here and enjoy some old comforts in a new day. (And it’s my guess that someday TV sets and books with spines will be quaintly retro and thus regain their popularity with the young folks again.)

10.  I had a boyfriend in college whose dad, whenever he saw me would ask, “what’s the good word?”  My assumption was that the word was expected to be different with each asking.  As a self-described “word girl”, words have never been far from reach, but for some reason this question always stumped me.  I was supposed to choose a single word that was good? Just one?  I like options.  From ways to solve a problem, ingredients to throw into a Quiche or ways to rearrange words in an essay, I don’t like having only one approach.  So, as I have been writing and thinking about this day and last year and tomorrow and all the days after tomorrow that fall under the umbrella of 2015, I have been thinking of words and meanings that I want to take with me into those days.  And there isn’t just one.  My vocation and avocation are all about Human Talent and Alignment, words that capture the importance of who we are and where we fit and contribute to the world.  Intention and Consideration and Boundaries are words that reflect an approach to choices and ways I interact with friends and strangers, those who agree with me and those who challenge me.  Experience is a word that describes my past as well as something I craft for others as they interact with me. Accountability, Collaboration and Reciprocity are words that describes my philosophy of engagement. Truth-telling, Forgiveness and Joy are at the heart of our experiences with these words and with each other. Creativity is the sticky word, the glue that holds it all together. As you let this day soak in, enjoying the freedom of it even as you prepare for all of the days to come after, find your good word–the word that describes and reminds and captures something important to you, about you, about your world and your relationships and what you are working to create.  And perhaps, like me, you might want more than one.