new year

The first week of 2012 has almost run its course, the first workweek in any case, and it's time to follow convention, however belatedly. Happy New Year! Wishes of health, success and happiness shouldn't know a season or need a specific occasion, but it's time for them, and more: resolutions, plans, hopes.

I don't do resolutions, but I have great hopes. As I've mentioned a yawn-inducing number of times before, this year will be a year of great change for me. This alone wouldn't be worth mentioning. If I can do anything, it's change. What's new is that I still don't know what these changes will look like.

Previously, I've always known at least half a year in advance where the next step would take me, enough time to prepare and shift my mindset. Maybe that was luxury; maybe I had it too good. Whatever it was, this time is different. My current job will fill my days with things to do and my life with meaning for a paltry four more months. The future beyond that is still unwritten.

Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe hopping from one sorted-out situation to the next, seamlessly and painlessly, was keeping my wild side sedated. Maybe I need to go all they way to the end and look into the void beyond. What turn might my life take if I suddenly found myself unemployed and bound by no obligation or schedule?

It's not exactly a prospect I yearn for. London is not a place I can afford for too long without a salary, but a move makes sense only if I know where I'm going. While predicaments beget opportunities and problems can open their victims' eyes to creative solutions, I'd much rather prefer to sort things out before complete meltdown strikes.

On the other hand, I could do with a chance for profound self-inspection or time for the things that are currently suffering from undeserved neglect: hobbies, infatuations that burn hot but fizzle out too quickly, and long-suppressed interests. A few months of freedom, a cabin by a lake, a sabbatical of sorts, to find out which unimportant things are important in my life, what I would like to do more of – at the expense of other possible activities.

This is where hope comes into play. The perfect progression of 2012 would see me interview successfully for a new job deep into the tail end of my current one and be offered a position starting somewhere in the second half of the year. I'd pack my bags and decamp to wherever life takes me and rip through a few months of something close to the uninhibited hedonism of my student days (with one notable difference). And then I'll dig with mad enthusiasm into a new challenge. That's what a happy new year would look like.