Old year, new year

The new year is so close, I can smell it. While logic dictates that demarcating time is an arbitrary exercise, and that it is no more the new year in 6 days than it is in 4 days, the idea still panics me. I look around at my life and the incomplete projects, and there is this pressure to create a clean slate for the new year. If I don't, perhaps it will taint the new year with any negatives of the old year.

Yes, amongst war, famine, crime and poverty, I choose to focus (and become anxious) about time. Time is an old foe. Whether its evidence confronts me in the bathroom mirror every morning (hysteria is not a great way to begin the day) or the sweat of a looming deadline makes the clock hands go into overdrive, time likes to bitchslap me constantly.

It could all be sorted if I was able to create a routine. I have listened to other people, eavesdropping on discussions of their day. People know when they are waking up. They have a set time to eat breakfast, to work, to sleep... whereas each day is a surprise to me. There are no mealtime plans, toothbrushing times and work schedules. It is me and my computer. Oh and the clock, reminding me that time is passing.

Perhaps 2007 will be the year to set routine. Or I could just go back to bed now and forget I had this specific impulse. I just yawned, so it looks like number two is winning at this moment.