So, by Chinese reckoning, we are about to mark the beginning of a new year.
I don’t know much about Chinese New Year, except that the festivities last about two weeks, a fact of which I highly approve. I am, in general, greatly in favor of extended holiday celebrations, an area in which the United States lags woefully behind the rest of the world.
Here, it takes a weekend conjunction to manage more than one day off for holiday festivities, and that’s just sad. We need these breaks for mind, heart, and soul, and, yet, for all too many working Americans, a holiday break is just a day off and then back to the grind, unless you work in a service industry, in which case holidays are just grind, grind, grind, same as every other day of the year.
Sorry. I hadn’t intended to get grumpy there. I was, in fact, meaning to remark upon new beginnings.
I don’t know whether it is traditional in the East, but I think this is a fine time for reflection, new direction, even, if you can bear the burden, resolution.
Although I have groused about the Western New Year’s Day tradition of resolutions, I am very much in favor of reflection and goal adjustment.
Whether that reflection/adjustment comes at an officially recognized occasion, such as marking the rollover of the local calendar, a personal mark such a birthday or anniversary, or just, “this Thursday,” I appreciate the process.
I have, in fact, been engaged in such a process myself lately, and you are seeing some of the results in the form of new content in this once-dusty space. Granted, snow days played a part there, but that was just fortuitously coincidental. This space, as you will see, is not all dead, but, in fact, only mostly dead, which, as you probably know, is slightly alive.
See you tomorrow.
lastgreypoet 