I buy a lot of diaries, fill them full of good intentions
Each and every New Year’s Eve, I make myself a list
All the things I’m gonna change, until January Second
So this time I’m making one promise
Yeah, This will be my resolution, Every day is New Year’s Day
– Carolyn Arends

The first day of the New Year is traditionally a time for new beginnings, looking back at what was, but more importantly taking a look forward. We make resolutions: what do I want to do to improve in 2015.

Of course using January 1 as the beginning of the year is it is an artificial choice. And today didn’t used to be January first, either. Until the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, in 1582, today’s date would actually have been in December. Some churches still use the older Julian calendar – they are looking forward to celebrating Christmas soon. (Theologically it can be argued that we should be looking forward to Christmas every day, but that’s a topic for a different time perhaps.)

If you are Jewish, Muslim, Chinese or any one of a number of other backgrounds you may be using a different calendar as well. If you are Mayan, then the world ended a couple of years ago and you are only imagining that you are reading this.

I think we are hard-wired to take stock of our lives and seek out new beginnings, and on our own we usually fail. It may take a village to raise a child, as the proverb goes, but the same is true for us adults. That’s why Alcoholics Anonymous has sponsors – they know you can’t go it alone. Most of us who make resolutions at the beginning of January fail more often than not. If we didn’t, North Americans would be a lot slimmer. We try to do too much on our own, and not enough with others.

To me the New Year has more often than not been in September, because that is when school starts. As a student that was always important for me, as it was to my children when they reached school age. Not to mention being married to a teacher; that makes every September a very new year.

Looking back at the past and thinking about the future on a regular basis makes sense. And if we want to set an arbitrary date as a culture to do that, then January 1 is as good as any other day I guess. But when you reflect at this time next year, be prepared for some surprises.

The future is always an unknown to us. We can hope, we can plan, but things don’t always turn out the way we expected. I have no idea what to expect in 2015; I think I know some of what will happen, but when, I look back at the end of December, I may discover I was completely wrong about everything..

January 1 is traditionally a time for New Year’s resolutions. I don’t really make those. I do have some tentative plans for the year, but those can change. One thing I expect to see is fewer posts to this blog.

When I started writing this in September I had thought of doing about 50 posts, just to work through some things from my summer vacation. It has been more than twice that number. with posts almost every day. The record of the summer journey is almost complete, but I find there are still things to say on other topics – just not every day. At least that is my plan; I may look back in December 2015 and discover 400 posts for the year. You can expect fewer travel posts (though there will be some, from Turkey and elsewhere) and perhaps more religion and world affairs, since those posts have been very well received. And music – there will be more music posts.

So that is as close as I come to a New Year’s resolution. What about you?