Time To Pull Out The Auld Lang Syne

Another year wraps up and as usual, we stand (or sit, or lie down, depending on how drunk we are) and reminisce while trying to figure out if we've actually accomplished anything in the past 12 months or so. As I type this, it's about a day or so before 2004 sets in, and it always hits me just how bloody fast everything goes and how in the twinkling of an eye some of your most treasured truths can be shaken and your world spun like one of those BeyBlade thingies kids are playing in the malls nowadays.

It's been a really full year for the Ox. He's lost himself some, found bits and pieces again, lost a whole lot of himself (yet again!) and is currently in the process of yet another rebuilding. He's accepted the fact that life IS like that: a whole series of gambles and compromises and reinterpretations of sometimes the most lovingly held beliefs. As much as he'd like the world to fall into place the way he thinks it should (yes, I have dreams of ruling the world) there will always be fifteen (at least, last time I checked) other different ways anything can pan out, and frankly he's willing to accept that.

So for this new year at least the Ox decides to foreswear any manner of resolutions and instead concentrate on some of the smaller, perhaps less obvious things. Like how he has a tendency to fall into various pits and mires located in the vast land of Self Pity, how he sometimes throws too much of himself into things until clear judgement (and more often, common sense) is abandoned, and finally how the Ox sometimes falls into the "Too Much Of A Good Thing" trap. There are many more to be listed, but these are things that he'll start with and with any luck (as well as copious amounts of help from God) the Ox will greet the coming year slightly more mature and with a little more sense.

Of course, there's the issue of his PhD coming up soon, and it's going to be one of the more important career/life choices he will make in the coming months, since it's not only going to be a work-related issue (how wonderful if it is). Serious thoughts will be put into the final decision, and he'll have to make sure he's really ready when the time comes. As for other aspects of his (boring but sometimes tumultuous) life, he'll work at them slowly and with the realisation that nothing ever worth getting is easy.

As Dream (again!) says: Any view of the world which is not strange is false.

Simple truths, perhaps..but they are the best ones. So we bid goodbye to 2003, with all its fun, faults and flaws, while we open our arms and embrace the coming 12 months with as much spirit, gusto and joy de vivre we can. Heck, someone tell me a better way to do it.

Have a good new year, folks, and be safe.

Signing off one last time (in 2003 at least)
Ash.ox