This is the first New Year’s Eve where the urge to write something poignant and reflective has been… non-existent.
It's not necessarily because 2023 has had a shortage of lessons, learnings, moments and memories, the likes of which it has become customary to commit to digital ink at this time of year.
Equally, the significance of tomorrow’s ‘new beginning’ hasn't eluded entirely, since there is still something closely resembling clean-slate optimism brewing beneath this somewhat ambivalent exterior.
With this in mind, the only possible explanation I can come up with for my New Year’s nonchalance, is that the preoccupation with ‘being more present’ - something I’ve been penning about all year - might finally be paying off.
With the focus firmly on today - December 31st, not NYE - there was initially a refreshing freedom to write from a place of creativity and inspiration, rather than expectation and obligation.
With this in mind, I began the day with a blank-page and an open-mind, poised to see where the scatter-thoughts of a Sunday morning and that second cup of coffee would take me.
Eventually, what started the cogs turning, quite curiously, was a quote by Beryl Markham - a celebrated Adventurer, Author and Aviator.
The full quote is quite lengthy, but the most salient point on which I couldn’t help but pen a few choice thoughts was this:
‘If you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can.’
The idea intrigued me. Partly because it is the opposite of what I have always done, but more so because next month, I’ll be leaving just such a place - an edifice of bricks, mortar and yesteryears - which has been long outgrown, albeit not necessarily out-loved!
In the past, whenever there was an era such as this, whose door was about to be irreversibly and/or ceremoniously shut, my preferred method would be to pause and drink it in, even when there’s no more to be drunk!
It’s comes back to a (perhaps ill -founded) belief in the essence-encapsulating powers of…
Just one more minute!
Just one more glance!
Just one more photo!
The very idea of NOT doing these things - of not getting that final fix, and the regret that might ensue - it’s nothing short of anxiety inducing, and it applies as much to moving into a new home, as it does perhaps into a New Year.
If nothing else, Beryl’s advice has confirmed my belief in the decision to NOT do a '2023 Review' and wallow too much in the waters of what's been.
It does remain to be seen, however, if I can carry this 'don't look back' approach forward into 'The Big Move.'
In the meantime, the irony is certainly not lost on me, that in all of my best efforts to swerve the NYE narrative, I landed on a brief that would play me straight back into the clichéd (albeit comforting) hands of Auld Lang Syne.
Happy New Year!