SoCS new/knew — 12/31/22

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “new/knew.’” Use one, use both, use them any way you like. Bonus points if you use both. Enjoy!

This is not only a stream of consciousness post, but a wee bit tipsy post as well. 🙂 Enjoy! (I know I am!)

Today while running errands I was listening to NPR, and they were doing the end of the year programming—recaps of the year’s stories. From BBC to 1A, oh. my. god. How are any of us still alive? Environmental disasters. Health news, from COVID to M-pox. Human trafficking. Human abuse. Domestic violence. Trump et al. Ukraine.

The litany.

I knew all of that. All of the stories. None of it was new. Can I un-know it, please? It makes me feel powerless, helpless, for fuck’s sake, how am I supposed to process any of it, let alone all of it? I can’t. No one can. So we all will go collectively crazy, or numb, or indifferent, or something.

But that was 2022! 2023 will be a new year, right? Everything will be bright and shiny and happy and hopeful and…

Did I mention I felt the need to do some early New Year’s drinking, and this is also a tipsy post?

2023 is new. It is nothing but potential. (2022 was once the same, but I shall not think about that.)

I am rarely in the mood for New Year’s anything. Not staying up late. Not celebrating. No resolutions. Just a semi-audible grumble and going to bed early and just “get on with it s’ready!” It is all the same to me. Bah and humbug.

Except.

This year it is different. This year, 2023 is a new experience for me. I have got so many plans, and all of them with one goal in mind: Get. To. Scotland.

I wish I knew what lies ahead. I know my plans. I know what needs to be done. But we all know that “life is what happens while we’re busy making plans.” The stress is killing me. Can we just all agree to wave the magic wand and have it be 2024 and then we can review 2023 and see if what we knew is what we now know? Can the new, the future, become the past, with the whish and swoop of that wand?

I have a huge clock just tick tick ticking over my head. “Are you on goal yet? Are we there yet? Is this happening yet?” tick
tick
tick
tick
It is just a new year. One of many new years. I’ve had a few. The world has had way more than I have. The world has ended a few times and the world is still here. It will be here after 2023, whether my plans materialize or not.

I just wish I knew now what I will know then.

This is all so new to me. I don’t know how to be. I guess all I can do, all any of us can do, is just move forward, one foot in front of the other. Repeat. We’ll know. Eventually.