Now

The poet said, "Breathe in, breathe out, move on." It's pretty good advice for any day, but today it seems especially pertinent. It fits in well with the other sentiment that I have adopted as a child of the eighties: "Nothing changes, it's New Year's Day." These are the things I think about as I wake up and realize that I don't have a new calendar.
As I swept my porch yesterday morning, I mused on how clever the Chinese are to move their New Year's celebration a little further down the page, away from the rest of the holiday flurry. Any ritual that takes into account the passage of time seems a little simplistic, but finding a natural stop and start gives us dominion over something that we can only hope to observe. We can't control the way the present slips into the past, so why not rejoice?
This will be the year of firsts: first dates, first steps, first chances. It will be a year of lasts: last dances, last calls, last chances. New year, new decade, new opportunities. All those possibilities await, and this could be the time. New job, new carpet, new hope. It's hard not to get excited about the possibility.
Then again, most of this year will be tediously the same. Routine days in hum-drum weeks, with the anticipation of any break in the monotony: vacations, weddings, birthdays, Pop Tarts. It's a New Year, breathe in, breathe out, move on.