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| Watercolour Horse - Nov 2018 |
“Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning, but a going on with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.” Hal Borland
“To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.” Mark Twain
Oh look, it’s that time of year again - the start of a new year (or should that be New Year, just to denote its importance and significance?) Yes, the time when my bonkers brain tries once more to get me to sneak into my life yet another plan, under the cunning disguise of new year’s resolutions. Because, of course, a resolution is completely different to a plan (well actually, no, it’s not). And of course, it being the New Year will make all the difference to my ability to be able to follow and stick to any plan *ahem* resolution I mean (not at all the same as a plan) because, you know, it’s different. I insist - this time it WILL be different!
Yes, yes, I know I’ve never yet, in all of my fifty-one years of living on this planet with this brain, been able to stick to any of the hundreds of resolutions I’ve ever made (strangely reminiscent of my inability to stick to any plans I’ve ever tried to implement, outside of the routine I have installed to keep me functioning on a daily basis). But I live in hope (or a delusional state of magical thinking, and a stubborn resistance to accepting reality). You never know, this might be the year I achieve the impossible improbable highly unlikely (and, while I’m at it, I might just stumble upon the land of Narnia in the back of a wardrobe - if I could only find the right wardrobe).
Let’s face it, I love a plan; I love the idea of following a plan; I’m OBSESSED with plans; I just don’t have the genetic disposition to be able to stick to one, without tweaking, complicating, or abandoning it five minutes after I’ve made it. I’d have to have my brain genetically modified to get me to be the person I dream of being - super-efficient, rigidly structured, hyper-productive.
You know, when I look at it like that, what I basically mean is that I want to be a robot. Or someone else. Or both - someone who is a spontaneous robot, but who doesn’t have all of those confusing and messy feelings that get in the way of me functioning efficiently. Oh, isn’t that what the scientists working on Artificial Intelligence are trying to achieve? Something that resembles a human being, but with which you can replace the inefficient, inconsistent, unpredictable human workforce? And it’s not like they haven’t already made inroads, replacing them with automated services, thereby putting people out of work, and reducing the amount of jobs available. And here am I, offering myself up on a plate. What a dodo.
To get back to the point, then, giving a plan another name (or ‘re-branding’ it, as they say), and re-packaging it in shiny new wrapping is not going to change the results one iota. I still won’t be able to stick to it.
One day I’ll fully accept this, and stop living in the future. One day… (Oh, is that a plan I see before me, for how I plan to live in the day at some point in the future? Well, golly gadzooks, how on earth did that sneak in?)
Long story short, I have no plan to make any resolutions for this or any other year to come… but I’m sure that, if I contemplated that statement for long enough, I’d find that I’d somehow managed to sneak in a plan. Oh bum. *rolls eyes*
