Happy New Year!

It's New Year's Eve. Lots of single people are spending it alone. Some by choice and others (like me when I was single) through no choice of their own. I remember one new year's where I was stood up, so I rang it in by being in an Internet chat room with people who I "knew" from there, drinking...something that I don't recall. I do recall that it was pretty good though.

It's also the only time I've ever gotten sick from drinking. Coincidence? You be the judge.

They were nice people, though, so that was a good thing.

Hell, even some married people are spending it alone. And that's truly sad.

Wow, how uplifting this post has been so far! Let's rectify that.

Many of you around the world have already hit midnight, but there's still a few hours to go here in North America. I want to wish you the happiest new year's possible, no matter how you choose to celebrate it. We do a quiet night at home, and that's all we need.

New Year's is a time of renewal. It's a time where we really think about the future. When you really look at it closely, it's just turning the page on the calendar and having to write a different year on your cheques (do people still write cheques?).

But in actuality it's much more than that. It's an acknowledgement of the passage of time, of the inevitable creep of the future. It's a milestone in a sense. Sure, day by day the calendar turns, but a new year resets everything. You're going to get another Monday next week. But another August 31? Or any of the other dates that you've lived through this year? When the new year hits is the only time that you'll experience that date again.

This sense of a restart is why I think new year's resolutions are so prevalent.

Day-to-day life isn't going to change much. There will be new activities of course, and a major change can happen at any time. But it's at the beginning of this much-bigger time unit called a "year" that we think more long-term. We start making plans for the coming year, how we're going to improve ourselves, or live a better life or whatever.

I don't do resolutions because too many of them have fallen by the wayside. I think when you finally make the decision to do something about something in your life, it doesn't matter whether it's the beginning of the new year or the middle of Summer. You just do it. Making it a "New Year's Resolution" just puts that much more pressure on yourself to actually get it done. Which makes the feeling of failure when you don't follow through on it that much worse.

Just make renewal part of your every day life. Changes will come no matter what the date is. You don't need that calendar to turn over. Renew yourself now. Is it December 27th? Don't wait until New Year's. Start now!

Still, it's silly to ignore the milestone of a new year happening. As that number slowly builds year after year, that feel of time marching on regardless of what we do, we do feel the pressure of that a little bit.

So for that reason, I want to wish all of my readers all the best in the upcoming year. Make it a year to remember. Make something of yourself, some small improvement on something that has been bothering you, or whatever you want to do. Live it, enjoy what you're doing. Embrace life and it will embrace you back.