A New Year. Finally.

Well.

The holidays are over. BTW, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanza and Happy New Year to everyone. I’ve been so busy the past week and a half I haven’t had time to wish anyone well. I admit I’m glad it’s all over. I love the holidays. I just wish they only lasted two days instead of an entire month.

Doesn't that make me seem like some sort of awful bah-humbug person? I mean, who wants all of this fun fun fun to be finished finished finished in favor of the boring old routine?

But it’s finally 2006!

In my whole life I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited by the beginning of a new year. I’ve always viewed New Year’s as the most over-rated holiday. I’m not one for partying until midnight and into the virgin hours of the new year, or at least I haven’t been for the past fifteen or so years. And New Year’s Day always just seemed like a way to stretch out the holiday vacations for an extra day, when really I was more than ready to get back into life by that point. I’m the type that spends January 2nd taking down the Christmas decorations because I can’t stand to have them up a single second beyond Christmas Day itself. So pushing everything back another week is like pulling the bandaid off by degrees instead of a good, solid rip.

Too, I’ve always believed New Year’s resolutions were more than a little silly. Sure, I’d love to lose twenty pounds and to finesse my French so it's somewhat intelligible and finally finish unpacking those couple of boxes lingering in the basement, and I really should cut back on the number of four letter words I tend to utter. Believe me, I have enough faults to fill an entire notebook with resolutions. But if I can’t fix what’s broken any time during the other 365 days of the year, what’s so magical about January 1st?

This year, though, I have this sense of anticipation. A kind of excitement simmering just under my skin, a sense of something big coming. I don't have any reason to feel this way. 2006 is starting off just the way 2005 ended.

But something is different. My attitude. I’ve named 2006 the Year of Finishing, and I cannot wait to get started. Because this is the year I become a closer.

I plan to finish all of the half and three-quarters completed craft projects lingering in every corner of my house. Stuff I’ve forgotten all about because I stuffed it in a box in favor of some new, exciting project.

I will finish painting the trim, putting that final coat on all those miles of woodwork that need just that final bit of work to stop nagging at me every time I walk into a room.

I am going to finish filing and organizing all those stacks of papers I started to sort and file but then stopped when I got really bored with the whole project. Funny how fast that boredom sets in...

I commit to finishing the half-dozen half-read books on my TBR shelf. I’m not talking about the ones I’ve started but that haven’t caught my fancy enough to continue. I’m talking about the good ones that just weren’t at hand when I needed something to read, prompting me to start a new one that was. I have waiting-in-carpool-line books and killing-time-during-tennis-lessons books and waiting-room-fits-in-my-coat-pocket books, all of them great reads but half-finished.

Mostly, I will finish a manuscript. I will do it. Whether it’s via Jo Leigh’s uber-challenge or daily logging of word and/or page counts, I will finish one book. I will take one of my gazillion ideas and I will work past the hard part all the way to the final “The End”. Even if what I end up with is 100,000 words of crap, I can hold my head high and know that at least it’s crap that’s finished.

I’m tired of feeling like something is hanging over my head all the time. I’m tired of the sensation that there’s something I should be doing other than whatever it is I actually am doing. I’m tired of not enjoying the now because I didn’t finish with the then.

2006. The Year of Finishing.

I like naming my years.