New Year Resolutions – The Richard Lyle Organisation

January 1, 2019January 1, 2019

The Almost Inevitable New Year’s Day Post

How’s the hangover? I said how’s the hangover? 2018 was a bit of a shitter for lots of us and you might be carrying some of last year’s energy into this year along with the alcohol load your liver is clearing today. I’d like to make clear that I feel a little better about everything today than my biscuits do. My biscuits have been beaten up on the way to the plate, poor things.

We have passed that arbitrary moment time again and taking stock and making plans is more or less unavoidable. I’m using it as a cynical excuse for writing a few hundred words and getting at least a couple of dozen of you to read this nonsense. I’m no different from everyone else out there except I’m not trying to flog you anything. Not even biscuits.

For all the utter shite that landed on our heads and spilled onto our laps in 2018 – and there were Imperial fucktons of that, God knows – we had passing moments of joy. Sometimes it’s enough. It has to be enough; it’s all we have.

This is a bit bleak, even with the biscuits. It’s dreadful if your diet has already started and you can’t have biscuits. Me? I’ve eaten all the chocolate but there’s still the best part of an entire box of biscuits and a whole panettone in the kitchen. A whole very good panettone. And a bag of amaretti. And some of the biscuits Anne made in the week before Christmas. Were it not for the arbitrary moment in time this would just be an opportunity for a major diabetic crisis and not a character flaw.

I hope that 2019 is kind to us. It might be more practical to wish that we can be kinder to one another but there’s Brexit happening this year and that shit is awful. I’m going to have to remember that some of its proponents are human a few of them might have once had feelings too.

I’m getting it out of my system while I can.

Happy New Year, peeps. It could be considerably worse.

January 1, 2018January 1, 2018

Pinning Down “Now”

A responsible person would tell people that there is a picture of creepy-crawlies further down the page. I know one of them is a scorpion and that will completely freak at least one person who would otherwise want to read this out.

I’m just about responsible enough to do this.

It’s New Year. Another arbitrary moment in time is approaching. The planet is swinging past that spot in its orbit of the sun it occupied twelve months ago and you’re standing there wondering what the actual fuck you’ve done with yourself since the last time we were here.

I’ve been thinking a bit again about what makes this time of year such a point of change for people. It goes beyond spending the next few weeks getting the date wrong. I don’t have a cheque book any more. Who does? But I remember the hassle of having to score out the date in the top right corner of the cheque nearly every time I used one in January, February and the first half of March. Score, score. Swear. Initial. New date.

I think now that it has something to do with trying to freeze time. I want to pin a moment down, like a beetle in museum display case. A bit like Haldane’s God, I have an inordinate fondness for beetles. Unlike a Victorian naturalist though, I prefer my beetles out there disposing of shit, wood, discarded body parts or other beetles and not actually euthanised in a jar of something unpleasant then tagged and labelled in a cabinet of curiosities.

However, more poetically, I do want to be able to examine moments from my year and display them for their educational properties. I want to take a scuttling “now” from the landscape of the entire stream of “thens” and label it. I think most of my moments, like most beetles, would pass unremarked.

For most people, most of our our lives pass like beetles scurrying in the dark. Our lives are unremarkable. There is nothing about us which warrants outside attention and that’s absolutely fine. I’m almost comfortable with the notion of being nobody at all wandering around on an insignificant speck in a meaninglessly infinite universe. I think that’s why I want to pull out those specimens which have added a flash of iridescence to what would otherwise be a constant stream of the commonplace wee beetles.

January 1, 2017January 3, 2017

An Arbitrary Moment In Time

There is no real reason why we call the first day of January the first day of the New Year other than it has to be some day so it might as well be that one. January has been the first month of the year since Roman times and the first day of January has almost certainly been a source of angst and tension ever since then.

The first day of January follows fairly closely after the winter solstice which in turn is an obvious moment of renewal. Okay, it’s obvious if you happen to have a sodding great stone circle aligned just the right way. By the turn of the year, the increase in daylight hours should just about be becoming obvious.

For a time, 25th of March, Lady Day was the first day of the year. Lady Day is also known as the Feast of the Annunciation in more Catholic countries. Theologically, it makes sense to mark time from the moment of the Incarnation of Christ. It was the first day of the legal year in England for centuries, the day on which tenancies started. It’s still the start of the tax year if you take the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar into account which means that the 25th March is now 6th April.

I seem to have wandered off point again. I do have one and it’s this: the first day of the year is an arbitrary moment in time. It holds no special or magical significance. It’s no more meaningful than any other day of the year but it’s still the one that many people choose to Change Their Lives. There are countless articles in all the media about making changes to your lifestyle, your diet, your love life and many of them focus on this one day of the year.

The thing is, permanent change is hard. Stopping smoking is quite easy. The physical nicotine cravings only last two or three days and the rest is down to changing habits. That’s two or three months. Other lifestyle changes are similar. For people who are not lifetime athletes, think back to when you started running. You might have gone around the block twice a week with a longer jog at the weekend and it took some time for that to feel like a normal part of your life. Two or three months.

I suppose like everything, there has be a moment when you start and it might as well be this one as any other. As long as you know that the change isn’t instantaneous, that it’s a process and that it’s going to be a while before any change becomes the new normal then you’re going to be okay.

Oh, and Happy New Arbitrary Moment In Time.

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