Freewriting: New Year’s

What is it about December that makes us all so introspective? Is it just the societal construct of the calendar, the illusory meaning we’ve given to two random consecutive days? One day is the end of an era, the next is the beginning, but for no other reason than that we’ve all agreed that it’s so.

Maybe that’s not all of it, though. A lot of anniversaries, happy and sad, seem to congregated around the end of the year. And even when those anniversaries aren’t at this time of year, we’re reminded of them, because of the people who are present and absent.

Many of us make big life decisions at the end of the year. Sometimes we don’t realize how big those decisions are. We just…pick something up, try something new, follow an impulse. Sometimes we have to keep ourselves from thinking about how big they are. Take each day as it comes, get through the week, plot out the month, look no further than that to avoid drowning.

Then, a year down the road, we look back at those decisions, and at how they’ve changed our lives. Sometimes it’s more than we expected, sometimes it’s less. Sometimes it’s not the change we expected. Sometimes the change we wanted, or needed, didn’t happen.

I think we also are reminded of how much we’ve lost over the years when December rolls around. I don’t just mean loss in the more traditional sense, though we do tend to think about the family and friends who have gone before us at this time of year more than other times. I mean the things we had as children, that we are incapable of feeling anymore.

The unbridled delight of a snowstorm.

The inability to sleep because we’re so excited for Christmas.

The doubt in your mind concerning magic and whether it’s real.

Some of these things we can still, sort of, find within ourselves. But it’s not quite the same. Because now we know that, eventually, we’ll have to get out and drive in the snow, and deal with all the people who don’t know how to drive in snow, or are overconfident in their snow-driving abilities. Now we have stress, and anxiety, and insomnia keeping us awake at night.  Now we know that magic exists, but only if we create it for ourselves. We know magic is a lot harder than waving around a wand, or saying the magic words.

Magic is music.

Magic is poetry.

Magic is turning ink on a page into worlds.

Most of all, magic doesn’t just happen.  It takes work, dedication, and luck.