Wait... Wait...
A trickle of thought. Not quite the reflective kind. As much as I'd like to see in the New Year in a state of Zen-like calm, I'm currently worrying about the Teen who is celebrating New Years at the party of a friend of a friends. (I'll be picking her and her boyfriend up at 1am - they'd better there!!)
She's going to turn 18 in 2013. Eighteen!
Realising your very first baby is no longer a baby, and is walking the steps of an adult (but still with the tumultuous emotions of a teenage girl) brings a whole new meaning to parental anxiety. I'd quite like to wrap her up in tissue and pop her in the freezer until I'm old enough to deal with having an adult teen. Another five years should do it.
If I could have any kind of New Years wish, it would be that this year is a better one for her. She has all that teenage angst going on.. The bleak inner voice the tells her she's too fat, too ugly, too unpopular.. Fueled by the startling ability to make self-destructive decisions, and fanned by the fellow teen girls who cheer her on in her self-hate. The kind that are her best friend one moment, then spilling her deepest secrets to the world and telling her to go kill herself in the next. I hope above all hopes that 2013 will be the year that she sheds the fake friends and gains some inner peace and emotional stability.
New Years Resolutions? Haven't made those since I was a kid. I remember sitting up all night writing up a list of ways in which I would improve myself over the next 12 months, even at an age where there was very little I could do to control life's circumstances. Resolutions were never kept then, nor are they ever now. The only tradition I hold true to is a New Years Day swim. At the beach preferably, and even if it means just dipping my toes in the water (Let's be honest - I can't really swim.) Cleanse away the old year, start the new one with a clean slate. In theory.
I'm feeling bad for the fact that the Lad is sitting across the room channel surfing, and though we're in the same room, we're almost alone. Normally, it's perfectly comfortable for us to share the same room while doing our separate things. But tonight is not a night to be ignoring your loved ones while perched in front of a computer. I should have thought of profound realisations earlier, rather than try to scrape together anything now.
Quick - resolutions. Let's pretend I'm going to make one and actually remember it for more than a day.
1. Put Infinite Monkey Design on hiatus. It's stolen far too much time from the kids.
2. Remember to live, rather than simply exist.
3. And maybe, if it's not too much to ask... Maybe learn when to turn off the computer.
HNY..... :)
