Stay Imperfct for a Happy New Year

It’s not a typo.  I typed imperfct that way, and even though spell check wants to “correct” my imperfct typing I’m going to leave it that way because no matter how hard I try I’m still imperfct and after seventy-six years of trying not to be I’m going to accept and be happy with myself just as I am and I don’t have to wait until December 31st to make that my single resolution for the New Year which starts on any day I want it to.

I hear my tenth grade English teacher mumbling, “Run on sentence, Alan.  Run on sentence.  Chop it down to bite size bits.”

Well, Mrs. Bischoff, in the more than half a century since we met I haven’t yet managed to chop my life into bite size bits.  I’ve always devoured life in great gulps and I’m not concerned any more about choking on a run-on sentence. Or sentence fragments.  I try to communicate in whatever way best helps me connect with each reader, and if one word will do the trick then I don’t need an entire sentence that some expert could diagram into oblivion.

We all know the usual result of a typical New Year’s resolution.  Failure.  Nothing changes.  I weigh more today than I did on this day last year.  I haven’t written more than a few hundred words on my half-finished novel about how I regularly disappear behind a wall of reticence (which I have disappeared behind again).  Another year of my life has vanished into the same yesterdays that have gobbled every other year of my life.  And that’s perfctly fine with me.

At the moment I’m with a new life partner on a cruise ship in the Caribbean.  I’m not in Carmel preparing to host the “family and friends” Christmas Eve party which has been a fixture in my life for more than thirty years.

Where will I be, how much will I weigh, and what will I be doing on Christmas Eve 2017?  I have absolutely no idea.

We all have dreams.  We always seem to want something more or something better, or, at least, something different than what we already have.  But why not be perfctly happy wherever you are being whoever you are?

Tonight I’m not going to wish for anything more, better, or different.  I’ll finish writing this blog, enjoy a massage in the ship’s spa, and share a light dinner of who knows what with Sprite. Later, while Santa is busy on his rounds, we’ll probably cuddle in our cabin and knock off a few more episodes of Downton Abbey. We’ll fall asleep together when we feel sleepy (as we did last night and the night before),

Tomorrow we’re at sea.  No port of call. No destination.  No dinner reservation.

Sounds like a plan.

Enjoy the day, relish your evening, and find pleasure in the people and places that come your way.

I hope you’ll join me in finding that each day of the New Year always begins today, and that every day is as perfct as they come.

Love,

Alan