sell a car on tv.

Every year has a formula. It begins, as most have led themselves into thinking, with a clean slate. Because humans tend to imbued into themselves the alarmingly ludicrous idea that any form of negativity will dissipate and be gone over time, as long as you ignore it long enough, the knowledge that a new year is looming ahead is always thought to be a fantastic occurrence. And because I stoically refuse to be classed as a cynic, I would add that at times, it can definitely be one (a fantastic occurrence), but most go about achieving this stage of effervescent illusion in all the wrong ways. In many ways, a new year has most people thinking that their problems can just be forgotten about because “It’s A Brand New Start!”

Then comes the anti-climactic calm, and then reality sets in that nothing, really, was resolved by forgetting about it.

Records have been straightened out, I suppose, by others. But the effects are short-lived - fruitless at best - and the realists battle a perpetual war against the hat-wearing, cheering, joyous crowd shouting “Happy new year!”, thinking to do Everything by solving Nothing, Really. I’m rather sure there have been past meagre attempts at letting humanity know that new years and new millenniums will not magically sledgehammer the previous era’s ice-chunk of troubles and quandaries into mini fragments of rainbow candy-farting-unicorns. No. As much as we like to ignore it, those problems journey with us across the causeway to the new year. In an ideal world, they get held up at customs and sent back; but where you live? They mutate into nefarious little grenades that might make your entire year miserable the more you treat them like imaginary lint.

So here’s your resolution for this year: don’t forget. Closure is the new giving up. Perhaps it might be easier to perform the latter, because forgetting, in one’s mind, often equates to a less hassling time period, where you can just bubble under the surface, in the safe, in the neutral, in the delusional and ignorant.

I might say this all with the air of someone who thinks she knows better but the truth of the matter is that it is all I’ve been doing before this year: drowning in the safer options. 2009 was the year I let go of some of my inhibitions, planned the things I never saw myself doing – really doing, outside of the confines of my skull – and plucked up the courage to dream and believe even more than I already have. When I found out that the world isn’t out to get me, as most people insist, and that there is so much more to life than what I’ve been told, and I have yet to see it for myself, that’s when I knew I had to have the upper-hand. Ultimately, I wanted to say ‘I did’ instead of ‘I was told that…’

And that’s how I don’t forget. I don’t forget the bad times, to awkward times, the miserable times, the downright suicidal times; because forgetting would mean that the lessons are lost, and tongues are turned archaic. Ten years from now, I would love to look back, cringe slightly, and bask in the knowledge that because of all the everything I overcame – as opposed to cowering in its demonic presence – it all turned out okay.

So 2009, I definitely won’t forget you, but 2010 is looking pretty rad from where I’m standing. Here’s to misadventures, risky-living and breaking the status quo. Happy new year motherfuckers!