2021: Don't let the Door Hit You

This is it, December 31, 2021, the last day of the year. What we're supposed to do now, if we are to be traditional about it (and I am generally traditional), is write a reflection on the year just past.

Well I don't wanna and you can't make me. It would only be a litany of what you already know. 2021 has merited about every negative adjective in the book and I don't wanna think about it no more. 

I have not stayed up to greet the New Year in about six years now but I might stay up tonight only to make sure 2021 leaves, and then I'm done with it. Finished. There will be no reflections of the past year by me. End. Of. Story.

This doesn't count as a reflection, does it?

I'm only sleeping

Yesterday was January 1, 2021. It also was also the eighth straight time I did not stay up to greet the new Year. 

Why do I think this? Because it first happened when 2012 became 2013. I did that consciously in homage to America's teenager, Dick Clark. He had helped us greet the new year for, well, many new years, but had passed away in April 2012. So I made up my mind not to greet 2013 without him.

Since then I've thought,  I don't need to stay up simply to hear my fellow Detroiters strafing the sky with their errant bullets. What really is the point in that?

I look forward to the new year every new year. But I need my sleep (ok, I just want it), and waking up at three AM with the first thought, hey, it's a new year, ain't a bad way to greet it.

Resolved

New Years Day 2021 is here. So now it's resolution time.

Ah, the hell with it. Try to be better than you were before and let it go at that. Sure, specifics are nice. And we all need goals, something to aim for to perhaps measure how much better we become. But the real measure of a man (and a woman too) is in the immeasurable. What is immeasurable?

Being kind. Being charitable. Being helpful. You never know exactly how effective those things may be. But you know in your heart and your head that they will. 

Happy New Year everyone.