OK, so if you
’re reading this it’s a fairly safe bet that you’ve survived New
Year’s and that your eyes are now back to focusing in unison. This
is always a delicate time, as we with no small trepidation approach
the symbolism of a new round in the cycle of largely meaningless
activity that we like to ca
ll life.
OK, so if you’re reading this it’s a fairly safe bet that you’ve survived New Year’s and that your eyes are now back to focusing in unison. This is always a delicate time, as we with no small trepidation approach the symbolism of a new round in the cycle of largely meaningless activity that we like to call life.
Since this is a time of beginning, we must have some structure, like training wheels, to help guide us into this brave new world that ends in a “4,” and for that purpose we have with the acquisition of experience evolved what we might call The January Rules, some of which are as follows:
Rule #1: For God’s sake, don’t buy anything. Always an important rule, it is particularly crucial this year as we head for the storm cellars to await the onslaught of credit card bills whose weight will tear our mailboxes from their moorings. This year, according to all reports, we were feeling better about the economy and our prospects, so we loosened the purse strings and went heavy on the presents, especially the high-end ones.
However, “feeling better” doesn’t really come in the same shade of green as actual money, and since for most of us the highly-touted economic recovery has yet to produce anything beyond high touting, we may find that we have spent that which we do not have.
Ergo, we must not, repeat must not, wander the malls in aimless search of fetching frivolities as usual, at least until the paramedics remove from our chests the cardiac paddles we will need when we see the December MasterCard statement. This rule does not apply to the Bush administration, which will go on spending that which we do not have until all our creditors run out of money to loan us. This is called “tax-cut and spend.”
Rule #2. Experience guilt over everything you eat. This is the practical alternative to all those ridiculous new year’s resolutions we make about losing weight. We all know that neither Ben and Jerry’s nor the Cheesecake Factory will be shutting down operations during January in response to people really dieting – we’re going to eat whatever we damn well feel like this month like any other, but to demonstrate to ourselves that we have souls and principles and appreciation of health issues it is incumbent on us to feel guilty all month whenever we eat anything at all, to show our awareness that we’re letting ourselves and our doctors and Jenny Craig down by not starving ourselves into barely-visible wraiths like we know we should.
Rule #3. Keep your head down. A new year always brings new laws, new policies, new attention to things previously ignored, and you never know when something you missed a memo about is going to rise up and smite you. For most of us it’s a full-time job to ingrain the habit of writing “2004” on important documents, but that may not be enough; as long as John Ashcroft remains at large there could be changes the government isn’t at liberty to tell us about until they detain us indefinitely for doing the wrong thing, and these days they probably won’t tell us then either.
As a general proposition it’s a good idea to just do as little as possible this month until we get a better handle on the situation. Avoiding all activity of every kind is the best way to make it to February.
There are others, of course, some of them more personal than general application, which we all incorporate into our lives in the weeks after The Ball Drops. In fact, maybe that’s the real significance of Groundhog Day; by early February we’re all ready to stick our heads out of our holes and reconnoiter. With luck the omens will tell us it’s safe to hop back on the treadmill.
Robert Mitchell is an attorney in Morgan Hill.
