You can pick all the goals you want for a new year, ask me; I have, and then some, but your themes will find you.
Or, to put it another, more personal way, I can talk all I want about 2009 being the year of "Money is AWESOME!" or "Whoop it up wherever possible" or "Focus! Focus! Focus!" I can put those intentions in my head and on the front page of my notebook and refer to them frequently. I can have projects and actions that fall neatly and correctly under those variously labeled category headers.
But in action, when I actually do these things, a theme emerges. You'd hope that it emerges like gentle but powerful rays of the sun piercing through the blackness of the night sky, gradually casting the brilliant light of day by which one can find the coffeemaker, one's ass and other necessary items for getting things done.
What it actually looks more like is some mutant swamp creature out of a 1950s EC comic, slick with slime, one crusty bug-eye looking at you sideways like maybe it's hungry for people. Only you don't see it right away because (a), it's actually blocking the light you're used to and (b), your back is turned to it, anyway.
This is hardly a welcome harbinger of things to come (being eaten? being tortured and eaten? being slimed and tortured and eaten?), so of course, one's next (and very logical) reaction is that thing where you clap a hand to each ear and squinch your eyes closed and do a loud, "LALALALA-I-CAN'T-SEE-YOU!!!" kind of dealio. Great monster repellant, that.
Don't get me wrong: I do think, well, more and more, anyway...well, theoretically more and more..., that money is, indeed, AWESOME! And I've been whooping it up, if not wherever possible (because once I get that far, I'm pretty sure I'm moments away from kicking the bucket), then more often than before 2009. And, here and there, I've been focusing. (Really! I have! No, seriously, have you seen how many words I've written so far this year? I hope not, because it would mean you are NOT focusing.)
Slimy, the Human-Eating Critter, however, is suggesting a different theme for the year: LEAP. Or, LEAP, MOTHERFUCKER! Or even, WHAT PART OF "LEAP" DID YOU NOT UNDERSTAND, MOTHERFUCKER?!
And then he just looks hungry.
This leaping thing...it was not on the plan. No one has arrived with a net of any kind and I can't see the other side or the bottom anymore. But Slimy, he's not a big one for detente or diplomacy or even a brief time out. Slimy's more like LEAP OR BE LUNCH.
Here I go again, dammit...
xxx
c
Image cropped from a FANTASTIC photo by ClickFlashPhotos via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license. Please do click through to see the full magnificence.