Resolutions and Predictions

January 5, 2013

Times Square New Years Eve Ball (Photo credit: ★ SimonPix)

Right off the bat, I’ll tell you that I don’t make resolutions or predictions.  Having arrived at seventy-two a couple of months ago, most of my resoluting over 2013 will go into sticking around to see what happens on the way to seventy-three and my predictive powers have never been very good, anyway.

So, now that Congress’s swan dive off the fiscal cliff turned out to be just another bungee jump, with more of the same to come, this year I will carry on carrying on pretty much as I’ve been doing all along.

I still have the list of things to do inside and outside of the house – adding new chores as I cross off old ones that are completed.  I figure I’ll be finished by the time I’m eighty, then I’ll just start at the top of the list and do it all again.

The tomato and pepper starts (two of each) for my indoor garden will be big enough to transplant into their permanent pots in another week or so and I remain, as always, hopeful that this year they will actually survive long enough to bear fruit.

The pot of lettuce in front of my sunny south window is growing (slowly) in spite of the many cloudy days we’ve had lately and tomorrow or the next day, I will start the first batch of sprouts on the kitchen cabinet, to nibble on this winter.

The upstairs apartment needs painting.  I’m hoping to get to that over the winter, one room at a time.

And, of course, there are always the little boredom breakers – plotting next spring’s gardens, mending torn clothing, remaking something I can’t use anymore into something I can use.  (I’m actually quite good at mending and sewing by hand, having been born at a time when mothers – most of whom had just been through the Great Depression – still taught their daughters that skill.)

Over the next year, I’ll continue my never-ending battle to power down, declutter, patch, paint and generally make-do in my life (as all good doomers should) and enjoy the challenges that arise along the way. After all, if most of us are going to wind up there sooner or later, I already have a good start on sooner.  It just seems immanently more practical than waiting for later to arrive when we least expect it.

So, although I don’t have anything against them, per se, I don’t do resolutions or predictions.  I do find that, living on a budget, a list of more costly repairs and upkeeps is a good thing.  It allows me to work them in as I can afford them and the small things get tucked in around the big stuff as they come up.  Moreover, I find the big predictions useless for the average person, even the ones that might be accurate.  What are you and I going to do differently if Israel should attack Iran, the economy goes blooey again, or oil prices go up another notch as our one hundred years of oil and gas peter out sooner than expected?  Mostly, if any of those predictions actually happen this year, we’ll get poorer.  Either we’ll be well practiced at that already, or we’ll learn very quickly how to do it.  Most of us don’t have the luxury of other options, whether we know it or not.

And that’s my start-of-the-new-year blog post.  No resolutions.  No predictions.  Just a wish that whatever befalls us in the coming year, we’ll be as happy, healthy and well prepared to deal with it as possible.  Here’s to 2013, everyone.