Another year goes by...

I don't particularly like New Years. I have always been shy of novelties; new books, new faces, in a nutshell, any sort of change - from some mental twist which makes it difficult in me to face the prospective. I have almost ceased to hope; and am sanguine only in the prospects of other (former) years. Many things turn on the New Year. We vow and reminisce; we plan and gather our thoughts towards an action we may not be able to carry out through the following twelve months. Some things end and some start. We get an imagined chance to start afresh, a New Year, a clean slate. The New Year is also a boundary and arbitrary line drawn to enable the world to sort things out. 

From Christmas Day till New Years Eve, I like to plunge into foregone visions and conclusions. I encounter past disappointments. I try to make myself armour-proof against old discouragements. I forgive, or overcome grudgingly, old adversaries. But most importantly, I review my last year’s resolutions, in hope to carry them out in the following year. If anything, each new year teaches me that plot and plan as we will, every month will spring up some completely unexpected surprises on us; people will change for better or for worse – some will come into our lives, others will leave us. Come what may, one maelstrom after the other, life will stop for no one and nothing. With this spirit in mind I begin 2011 and like every year, resolve to make this year, the best one of my life.

To those who follow my blog and those who don’t, ‘May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books, and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art. Write, or draw, or build, or sing, or live, as only you can. May your coming year be a wonderful thing, in which you dream both dangerously and outrageously. I hope you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it; that you will be loved, and you will be liked; and you will have people to love and to like in return. And most importantly, because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now, I hope that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind. And I hope that somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.’ – Neil Gaiman