Out With The Old

Let's hope there's a new

I’m writing this on the last day of the year, but it’s not the most important last day of the year to most Americans. That would be the last day of the fiscal year. That’s when most businesses are either beaming with pride or in such a bad mood that they make the Grinch look like the good witch Glinda.

Not caring two cents, or even one cent less than two, about businesses, I only care about the last day of the calendar year.

Or do I? Someone vitally important to me has a birthday on the thirty-first. That’s what I care about. As far as the year goes, the 31st of December is a very dull ending to a boring book, if you ask me. Besides, this whole New Year thing is in our heads. We made it up.

Or is it outside of our heads and in our world?

What we think is reality often becomes reality, perception becomes truth, and truth, voilà, becomes something like Daylight Savings Time, which isn’t truth but a bunch of people playing with clocks without really knowing why.

That whole paragraph was just an excuse to type the word voilà. I never get to use it and now that I have I feel satisfied.

And nobody is really celebrating a new year. They’re celebrating because they like to celebrate. A new number on the calendar? Really? If writing a five at the end of a larger number instead of four is your cause for celebration, you don’t really need a cause. You just like counting down to midnight while drunk.

The rest of us are doing something REALLY fun, like avoiding crowds.

I will be celebrating New Year’s by drawing. Crazy, right? Charlie the coffee cup will be there and we’ll be having a great time making a reality that isn’t this one, but kind of is, and side stepping anything that’s practical and needed in the real world.

Drawing comics may be work, but drawing for fun is still fun. In fact, anything that’s created for fun is often way better than anything that’s created for work, at least for the creator. Because it’s so easy to procrastinate and put off work, I like to trick my brain into having fun.

OK, I haven’t been able to make that trick work, exactly, because my brain is too smart for me, but I have fun trying.

Just remember to be quiet on New Year’s Day for the poor souls who had too much fun celebrating. They will be grouchy and annoying. That’s how many people enter the new year, upset and confused. Kind of like a baby.

Hey, maybe all of the celebrating makes sense! For a new year you need a new mind, so you better reboot yours. The easiest way to reboot your brain is by drinking yourself into oblivion while counting down to the new year with a heavy slur. You’ll wake up confused, grouchy, and wanting the basic elements of life.

Like coffee.