2006 has been stacked full of important moments for me. I turned 21, I had my first nationally-published article, I got my journalism degree and I got some priceless experience in a newspaper office. I think it’s safe to say that this has been the most eventful and important year for me in a fair while and there’s little else I could have asked for from it.
The title of this post is a paraphrase of a friend of mine (who may have paraphrased it from somewhere else) and it’s an opinion I find difficult to argue with. Why is the transition from this month to the next any more significant than the others? Why is the turning of midnight on this day more important than the 364 other times it happens every year?
The truth is, it’s not, and yet you can’t help but feel some kind of gravitas around the whole thing. Of course it’s just an accounting mechanism, but it’s an important one. The end of the year allows you to take stock of what has been and think about what comes next; of course you can do that any day of the week but the year is just long enough to get a fair comparison but not too long as to make the data irrelevant. Just like how companies compare one year’s profits with the last, we as humans tend to take one year and hold it up against the ones that went before.
If the past year has been anything to go by, 2007 should be a very enjoyable experience for me. However, just as on 31st December 2005 I had no idea what was in store for me I won’t be anticipating or planning for anything tonight. That said I do have my plans, plenty of them. Hopefully one or two of them will begin to form in a more public way in the next month or so.
Until then, have a good night and a nice start to the new year. It’s silly to expect it to be an entirely happy one, but let’s at least hope that the good will outweigh the bad when we sit back and take account for it all this day next year.