The same old new start

I have a friend who is relentlessly upbeat. Already, only a day in to 2011, everything is better, more wonderful, more inspiring and fulfilling than that tired old 2010 ever was, and it all looks set to get even better. I don't know how she does it, and to be honest I often find it exhausting simply to read her posts. Matching that level of energy is a distant dream. Or nightmare.

I have another friend who's approach to the New Year has been decidedly - I might even say determinedly - more downbeat. While she admits the possibility of good things to come, the admission is almost buried under the weight of expectation that, mostly, 2011 will be full of shit.

I mention these two friends only to illustrate the extremes of approach to the "new start" that the New Year represents. As with most extremes, the reality will be somewhere in between. Very few years are entirely bad or good. Yet another friend has recently written her(*) traditional year-end meme in which the questions "what was the high point of the year?" and "what was the low point of the year?" both appear, and both have an answer. Every year has its highs and lows. Some years the lows may be subterranean and most years the highs won't reach the cosmic levels we may dream of, but as an old manager of mine used to say: "aim for the stars and you might hit the trees." And I'd rather be sitting in a treetop than grubbing around in the roots.

Trouble is, new starts are never really new are they? We always bring with us the baggage of our previous experience. It colours everything we do. Both of those extremes I mentioned above are to some extent coping strategies for that. Believing in the power of positive thinking, maintaining expectations of the best outcomes, and preparing in minute detail for success are the habits of successful people, but are also powerful defences against the suppressed small voice of our baggage. That apprehensive and cynical voice which would counsel us to expect failure, and which talks loudest in those who can't maintain their Patronus against the Dementor's Kiss of past experience.

So as always I'll try to walk the middle path between bright shining (and some would say unrealistic) optimism and dragging soul-sapping (and others would say self-destructive) pessimism. I'll try to do more of the positive stuff - writing, thinking, reading, planning, plotting, querying, singing - and less of the distractive - playing cards, or Farkle, or otherwise spinning my wheels. I expect I'll succeed at this on some days and fail on others. But as Kipling pointed out success and failure are both impostors. I might be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, and end up in that treetop or on a journey to the stars, or I might have to scratch around for a slightly less impressive "high point" for the year-end meme. Either way it'll be fun. It always is.

(*) Incidentally, I *do* have male friends too. The fact that all three of the quoted friends are of the female persuasion is pure coincidence. Well, maybe not a coincidence exactly. More a natural consequence of there being only a handful of the blokes I know who write blogs.