Same Old Lang Syne

Do you make New Year's resolutions? What are their subjects? (These are not trick questions and there are no wrong answers) I stopped a long time ago before I met my wife before we had our children (technically, she had them), and before we came to the Land of Round Doorknobs.

The only resolution I can recall ever making, and the one I encouraged our two children to also make and to keep, is to do the best I can do every day. 

We spend too much time every day interacting with people who did us a favor showing up, be it for work or for whatever else there is. If you have zero passion or reason for doing or being what you are, where you are, spending any amount of time with you is too much work for me with far too little return. In the year that will get here on little cat's feet in less time than it takes to tell you about it, promise to never be that person, never.

The only thing each of us has the power to change is ourselves. And every day is a new chance to do just that. We own that choice and also we own the consequences for what we do, or what we choose to NOT do.

Be an exclamation and not an explanation.

Live out loud and at the top of your voice as more than one person I know is fond of saying. Be happy you are here because you are but a short time here and long time gone, and make sure the rest of us are thrilled about your presence as well.

Leave nothing undone and even less unsaid.

Each of us knows someone (or more than one someone) who departed from us this year and there are words still lodged in our throats and hearts we never said because we thought we had time to say them. We were wrong, and that's part of being human; being wrong but traveling on.

I hope whoever they were, they were so marvelous and amazing that we shall always feel their absence and miss them for all of our days. Make it a point to toast absent friends, accepting that all of this is a part of all of that and that our dance continues even as partners change because they must.
-bill kenny