Checking out the New Year

Progress is necessary, change is so very welcome, and a new year feels like we closed the old door and have walked through a new one. There is so much to look forward to, so many things to do, books to read, games to play, ideas to learn, places to visit, opportunities to experience. Life to Live.

Doing something as inane as writing down a new year on a new check, has always given me a little thrill. It's a number never used before. I have to think consciously, to make sure I don't write down the old year by accident. Seeing that new number opens my mind to all that is possible again: what was wrong can be changed, and what was right can be re-done, re-accomplished -- only with better results, better times, better scores.

It's a thing of the past now: the year 2012. We never need to treat it with as much importance again. It's a has-been year, a back-number -- obsolete, outdated, outmoded -- passe. It's a time we can relegate to our memories. Perhaps with some fondness, a year so full of wonderful happenings, it will be a year we can forever look back to as one of the great ones.

"Remember 2012?", we'll say, then pause, as the memories envelop us, bring smiles to our faces, and warmth to our hearts.

For others, the passing year may be one we'd rather forget, one of the years so full of anguish and loss, a year we'd rather not repeat, or even remember. Unbidden and uninvited, the memories will pop back into our heads.

"Remember 2012?", we'll think, then pause, as the memories wash over us, feelings of regret, sadness, longing, even embarrassment.

I no longer have much need of checks. My life is mostly all digital. I used to go to the ATM to get cash, only ever used for kid's allowance. Now there is no more allowance, and almost no more need for cash. Just a twenty dollar bill, for emergencies, is all that's required -- for those times that digital let's me down. There are no more ATM runs, and no more mass check writing for me. My order of a hundred checks will last maybe twenty or thirty years -- maybe a hundred. I expect they will last past the time they are even usable.

"Remember checks?" we'll say. "Remember cash?"

We'll laugh at the memory, much as we laugh at rotary telephones, room-size computers, or a life without Internet. We'll try to remember when it was we stopped using them, and end up relegating them to a decade. Every year we'll use them less and less, until they are only a distant memory. Every January I'll think back to all the other January's, much as I am now, remembering the times I derived enjoyment from that small thing: writing down a new year on a new set of checks. Then I'll move on, be thankful for an evolutionary lifestyle that makes such drudgery a thing of the past, embrace the new ways, and walk through the door to a brand new year. It will always be the best one yet, because it's now and it's different, and it's never been used before.

Welcome to a new year! Welcome 2013!