Resolution Redux

Toni writes:
I'm very happy to welcome Jessie Crockett to the Femmes today. The first night I met Jessie, it was my pleasure to find her body and announce to the room that she was dead. Well, not really. We were participating in a mystery dinner theater, and poor Jessie was the victim du jour. (Just for the record, I did not kill her.) When she's not playing possum or blogging great advice like this post, Jessie writes the Sugar Grove Mysteries for Berkley Prime Crime. Drizzled With Death is the first.

Resolution Redux
by Jessie Crockett

By the end of January New Year’s resolutions can start feeling a little tattered. Grocery stores are displaying Valentine’s Day chocolates instead of fiber bars and there are plenty of parking spaces at the local gym. Abandoned chore charts gather dust under heaps of unopened mail.

And then, just as all hope for change seems lost, a second chance appears. Every year, sometime between the end of January and middle of February, Asian New Year comes round and offers another opportunity to start afresh.

 

On January 31 the year of the Wood Horse begins. Rather than chiding yourself over plans gone awry, you could think of that first batch of resolutions as a warm up, a practice run of sorts. You might sift through your original list for things you still want to accomplish and discard the rest. After all, you’re a whole month older and wiser now; surely you know more about what you truly want from life.

Here, in the northern hemisphere, winter is a month older too, which brings a fresh energy of its own. Days are a bit longer and ground hogs will soon gift us with shadowy predictions. It seems to me that plans made now have a better chance of succeeding, especially since the horse year is said to bring zest, vigor and enthusiasm. 

Even if you don’t credit horoscopes, eastern or western, with validity, with all those fiber bars are on the clearance rack you could work on your physical health and your financial wellness too. By the time you consider all those available treadmills at the gym and the fact most unopened mail is bound to be junk you can congratulate yourself for delaying work on that list. Happy Year of the Horse!

Will you be celebrating a new New Year?

 

 

Comments

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

I CONSIDERED the treadmill, yes indeedy. My husband and I even walked to the local gym to check it out. Then we walked home. Voila, exercise.

Year of the Wood HOrse? What's a wood horse? So glad you know this stuff, dear Jessie!

[Jessie Crockett]

What a great way to use the local gym!

Each year in the eastern astrological calendar has an element associated with it. There are five elements: water, wood, fire, earth and metal. Every element lasts for two years in a row. There are twelve animal signs which last just one year at a time. Each particular animal/elemental combination comes around once every 60 years and has a particular energy associated with it. There is lots to explore on this subject all over the web. I hope you enjoy the year of the Wood Horse!

[catriona]

This is such a great post. And a bit of a life-saver. I've been forced to start calling January a liminal month in the great 2014 project. Now it's officially the start again!

[Mary]

Oh, I'm so happy there's a new New Year! Wood Horse certainly works for me. In fact, IT ROCKS.

Same here, Catriona. It's always the end of January before I'm really ready to accept that the old year is over.

Thanks so much for the info, Jessie, and for being with us!