Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Number Shift

Someone will tell you the new year is arbitrary. Someone will tell you it's not. Someone will ask if you have goals. Someone will tell you over 60% of them fail (some report even higher failure rates). Maybe you'll have spent the last two weeks with family, or friends, or office parties, or even media, bombarded with takes and suggested virtue and opinions and help that you might just hope isn't too demeaning, too presumptive, too cold, too distant. Maybe it's fitting then that it all comes in winter, when all things are too cold and distant. Maybe you'll drink and maybe you won't, maybe you'll pray and maybe you won't, maybe you'll eat luxurious food and maybe you won't, maybe you'll download an astrology app, or a dating app (New Years brings a massive spike in traffic for all of them from every demographic and culture), maybe you'll think about it all too much or not enough. Some will treat it like a birthday - another sign of passing time - others as rebirth, not an extension thereof. Through all these experiences, people will look for a cohesive answer, a reassuring sign, analysis, framework, catchphrase, a simple source of comfort that can be banked and relied on when most of us are just running around and trying to make the most of systems far too complex to understand. But there is no answer, no elegant solution to existence, no one-size-fits-all new years solution, referendum, annotation, no way to frame the upcoming year in a way that makes things work out, cohesively, every time. The ball drops in 10 seconds, the TV announcer is half a second ahead on the countdown, and then we're all left with "what now." The same as any other year. Coffee will be on the stove tomorrow at 7.

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