What You Do On New Years Day…

It is New Years Day. The holidays are drawing to a close and the new year is struggling to begin. I am looking forward again even in the midst of the mid-holiday lethargy. Like everyone else, I have lost track of what day of the week it is. If there is football, it must be a Saturday or Sunday, but it’s Wednesday. I think. Whatever day it is, I know for certain that today marks the beginning of 2020.

My mother was very superstitious. My father was just as adamantly not superstitious and had very little patience with the whole idea of superstitions. Which meant, of course, that Mother did all the good luck things on New Year’s Day anyway. The Baptist church did not follow the liturgical calendar, so there was no leaving the tree up until Epiphany. All Christmas decorations had to be gone before New Years Day or it was bad luck. On New Years Day we ate black-eyed peas although I don’t think anyone in our family liked black-eyed peas. We did not eat greens although they are also supposed to be good luck because Daddy despised greens and Mother was smart enough not to push it. There are other superstitions we did not follow. We did not have a “first footer.” Mother’s family was mostly of Irish descent and that was a more Scottish custom. I have read other superstitions such as it is bad luck to wash clothes or take out the trash on New Year’s Day. Nope. We didn’t follow those either.

The one superstition that haunts me is that whatever you do on New Years Day is what you will do all year. You are supposed to be intentional throughout the day to do the things that are important to you. This is why I am sitting at my computer at 5:04 pm writing a blog post. I thought last night that I needed to write something today. I have had a great day. I scored some bargains at the Dillard’s sale. I watched Alabama (SEC!!!) beat Michigan by nineteen points (take THAT Haurbaugh!). I was happily crocheting and watching the original Star Wars with my family when I could not stand it. I knew I could not let this day pass without writing, which is ironic since I have easily let the last two months pass without writing.

I started a blog because, after about fourteen months of not working full time, I finally got bored. Yes, it took every bit of fourteen months. I was tired and thrilled to have free time, no office, and no deadlines. At first, I was fairly consistent. Then our summer fell apart and I did not write a post for weeks. After that, twelve amazing days in Italy gave me plenty of content, so several posts actually made it to the world in late October and early November. Then it was Thanksgiving and Christmas, and here I am back at the computer on New Year’s Day.

The truth is I love writing. I especially love writing when I have done something funny or embarrassing and I can recount those adventures or misadventures. It is much harder to sit down and just write. So often, when you do that, bits of yourself leak out onto the pages and then they are out there for all the world to see.

As I look at 2020, I think of all the years that I wrote out my lists of plans, hopes, aspirations, and personal challenges to lose however many pounds was the going rate that year. I am a great believer in the idea of “write it down, make it happen.” I kept a notecard with my “write it down” list in my wallet for years. I remember when I happened to look at it only to realize that all those things had come true.

I am much less ambitious these days. My family is good. We are in good health (except for knees and backs and that’s just being in our late fifties.) I have embraced “retirement” with a vengeance. Only a good friend being in a bind lured me back into a very minor publishing project. I am not willing to do anything that will make me miss my water aerobics class. I have lunch with girlfriends at least every other week. I am making up for forty years of no girlfriend lunches.

All that to say, I have gotten lazy. And satisfied. And stagnant. We are extremely fortunate to have good friends. We finally have the chance to spend time in Colorado which is really Evans’ first home and my second. So, I am pretty happy. That said, I was chatting with a friend this morning and I assured her that her best days are ahead of her. We are the same age, so I meant that for both of us. Which goes back to why I am writing a blog post at the end of New Year’s Day.

I started writing to make myself write. Even if it was mostly back cover copy, sales conference material and emails, I wrote every day for decades. Writing has always been something I did without even thinking. It was easier to “think with my hands” while sitting at a computer than to talk something out. Now there is nothing and no one that makes me write. A report is not due. There is no catalog to pull together. Instead of emails, I chat in any number of text threads, but I don’t think those count.

We are headed to Crested Butte and hope to ski in January and that should provide at least a bit of vicarious entertainment. Evans is having knee surgery in February and I have overcommitted to several things, so again, lots of opportunities for misadventures. More challenging will be writing faithfully just to write. Just to connect with other people through the written word. To stop using the word “just” in every other sentence.

So, here I am, on New Year’s Day, doing the one thing I intend to do all year. I am writing. I hope this act of submission to the superstition fairies pays dividends and I am faithful to my own plans. Maybe I should also write it down and put it in my wallet. No promises on content, but I will be here.