It’s that time of the year again.  Out with the old; in with the new.  The end of one year; the start of another.  All around the world, crowds gather to welcome in the New Year with fireworks and festivities, but does anyone––outside of Scotland––actually enjoy it?

I always find forced joviality rather trying.  Whenever there is an expectation of fun it usually results in the exact opposite.  The pressure to have a good time is ratcheted up so high that it occasions nothing other than anxiety.  FOMO abounds.  The New Year arrives on a hangover of mild disquiet and unquantifiable regret.

And even if you attempt to avoid the compulsory corporate gaiety surrounding New Year’s Eve; decide instead to duck the celebratory throngs; dodge the drunken Auld Lang Syne, what are you left with?  A cold, dark, wet night––I am talking Northern hemisphere now––nothing but Jools Holland on the TV, and the prospect of being back in the office again the day after next.  For an entire year ahead.  A whole, long year of work.  Is that really something to celebrate?

For me, the 1^st of January is not the start of something exciting and new, it is merely another anonymous date in a long continuum of days from birth to death.  Is there any special reason why this date will be the one where your life changes for the better?  Perhaps it will change for the worse?  Perhaps the year ahead will be worse than the one just left behind.

Too much pressure surrounds New Year.  But perhaps that pressure can be relieved.  Spread out all the joie de vivre and good resolutions invested in New Year across all the other days of the year as well.  Don’t confine them to just one day.

Then, when they fail to happen, the disappointment will be similarly dispersed.

© Simon Turner-Tree

Simon Turner-Tree often finds himself lighting a damp squib.