Tag Archives: new year’s day

New Year’s Day: Tabula Rasa?

It’s New Year’s Day 2026, and I’m driven to conclude there’s actually no such thing as a clean slate.

Let’s think about this: When we want to do better for ourselves and those around us, the more thoughtful among us tend to look to the past–our past deeds, our past mistakes–for lessons to learn and carry forward.

January is named for the Roman god Janus, the god of beginnings, gates and doorways, transitions, time, duality, passages, and endings (Wikipedia); he is portrayed as having two faces, looking in different directions–because of this, it is often said that one face is looking forward, the other backward. So New Year’s Day is not only a time of celebration, but also of reflection.

Then there’s the concept of New Year’s resolutions.

As for me personally, I’m carrying a lot of last year’s events into this year, and I’m thinking about everything I did last year so I can learn from it and apply those lessons to this year. But, as usual, instead of resolutions, I’ve set goals; setting goals makes it easier for me to stay the course, and forgive myself if I slip up. Ergo, in my case, there actually is no such thing as a clean slate–but at least I can learn from my past, and do better going forward.

As the Scottish song goes, Auld Lang Syne.

Making a Deal (Or More) With the Future

It’s a new day, a new month, a new year, and I have so much on the ball this year: seeking a new career, writing a novel, various other projects in the pipeline, and trying to restart new good habits and maintain others. I still have to create a schedule for it all–as we all know, that’s the easy part (please note the tongue in my cheek).

In several areas of my life, I’ve really let myself down last year, but I don’t plan to repeat that this year. That means not being so lazy; if that means waking up before the roosters on some–or most–days, then so be it. I’ve always wanted my life to be different from what it is; now it’s time to do something to make that happen.

Looking beyond myself and my own stupid life, I have, within recent weeks, entertained fantasies of things I can do to help those less fortunate than myself, and using whatever resources I have, and get my hands on, to give people who are struggling a hand up; this year, I start making those fantasies a reality, in one way or another. Also, I plan to give my take about issues at the local provincial, national, and international levels more often than I have in the past.

One thing I’ve learned within the past year–articulated for me by the Netflix series The Fall of the House of Usher–is that a resolution is a deal you make with the future, and that keeping resolutions requires resolve. So this year, I resolve to find, and maintain, my resolve, and achieve all of the goals I can.