Susan Senator

This new year hit me heavily. It makes no sense to me having a holiday suddenly and in the middle of winter, the most desperate time of year, which declares that a new year has begun. Most people are totally tapped out in terms of celebratory or resolution spirit, and then we are asked to have another huge celebration and think how we can be better people? Where we think about what we want to change? For Jews doing this is doubly hard because we just did that in October (Yom Kippur), and without food, too! And of course the whole Book of Life threat hanging over our yarmulked heads like a sword of Damocles. (Why didn’t Damocles’ mother ever tell him, “Okay, Damocles, enough with the sword, already! You’re giving me a headache! Go find some scissors to play with!”)

I think the Jewish New Year makes so much more sense, coming at the beginning of autumn. Autumn is the time of real change, when summer yields to fall and kids go back to school. Fall is the time of melancholy nostalgia, the perfect moment to reflect. But the New Year on December 31 feels bogus and manufactured to me. It is completely anticlimactic, falling just a week after the big cahuna (Christmas).

I have certainly thought of resolutions, nevertheless, because I do that frequently. I have not wanted to post them because I am heartily sick of the whole thing. I did my Tabblo “year in review” mostly because I love looking at my pictures and collecting them together. That always lifts my spirits.

But it is, as I said, pressing me down to think about this new year and what it will be like, what I will do differently, what is over, and what is begun. I am listing them now, because I need to.

1) Not to be afraid to be who I am.
2) Switch stage name from Delilah to Shoshana and all that implies.
3) Earn more money (finish second book draft)
4) Find supplementary help for Nat (home program for independent skills, perhaps a friend)
5) Live more moment to moment, even feeling the pain if it is there, looking up from my computer or book.