So, here we are again, another New Year's Day. The first day of another year, and arguably, another decade. Hence my early morning thoughts about the significance of the date: 01/01/10, or as you may prefer, 010110, which looks pretty convincingly like binary to me.
I don't like to think that me life is a binary one in many ways (or perhaps I should say a digital one). On the one level it would be nice if most questions and issues could be answered as a simple 1 or 0, a simple yes or no. I look back through my old paper-based journals, from the days where I would write longhand in fountain pen for several hours a week, often with a good, clear legible hand, and there I see a lot of binary thinking. Clear rights or wrongs. And maybe some of that culminated in one of those life-changing moments when I decided it was time to move on, at least partly because I decided that if I met myself I wouldn't like myself.
That's not to say that there's a straight before and after. Far from it, I could see that life wasn't binary even then, and maybe ultimately our life decisions and life stories can be boiled down to a more trinary existence, the yes, no or maybe. The decisions or actions for which we responsible, and should be held to account for, those we cannot be responsible for, as well as those ones in the middle where we are not perhaps qualified to make judgements on, but leave to an external arbiter.
So where's this almost-stream-of-consciousness heading? Well, I discovered a little while ago a proto-blog post, one which never got published, of a sort of plan for the year ahead. For 2009. I feel there's usually very little point in publishing New Year's Resolutions, because I feel that they are doomed to fail, which maybe says more than I'd like to admit about my personality!
Let's just say that so much of that list still stands today. I'm still very much the person I always was, and probably always will be. Without tight externally opposed deadlines I find it very hard to finish tasks. I still get diverted too easily. I still live with a thousand and one unfinished jobs, and the unwillingness to let go of so many things, even though doing so would liberate the time to make a meaningful difference to those which remain.
So, in 2010, I wonder what will change. I have said yes to clearing lots of things from the house, slimming down possessions that I will probably never use, but because of the sentimental value attached to them there's no way I can just throw them out. They will have to go somewhere where they will be used and appreciated, and if I can realise some of their monetary value too that would be good. And that, of course, is where the problems arise - finding the time to manage them and ensure that the lists are accurate enough for anyone who wants them to know what they can have. With several thousand CDs that could actually take quite a long time. At least those are catalogued (even if the catalogue format is somewhat inflexible and unfriendly) - the vinyl LPs are not. And then there's the books which need a secondary sort. As for the OO/HO model railway locomotives.... well, last time I had the opportunity to dispose of them emotion overran reality. I think I shall have to cross that bridge when I come to it.
But now I'm rambling. What a surprise!
