Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

A glance back over my shoulder

Julie Carter

Sometimes looking back can help us gain wisdom for looking ahead. Of course, Lot's wife might disagree with that, but so far, I'm still in the "gaining wisdom" phase of life.

Every year, if we are still breathing, we are gifted with this change of the calendar from the old year to a new one, from a fast-paced, crowded, busy holiday season to a quiet, chilled January with, usually, nothing overly remarkable on the calendar.

There has been a long-standing saying around this outfit about this time of year. It goes something along the lines of, "We'll just get this year over with so we can start on next year."

Putting up a new calendar with a new number seems to instill hope in the masses. It offers a new lease on life when we promise ourselves to do better, be better people and live life a little better than we did before.

Any reason for improvement is a good one, but I'm not sure why we wait until January. Could we possibly work up that much steam on a daily, weekly or monthly basis all year long? I know we don't, but I don't know why we don't.

One thought is that when we give that glance behind us in the short or long term, we tend to recall the best of what happened. Humanly, we want more of that and less of what we didn't enjoy. In natural progression, we then determine that the imminent future should be more of what felt good and produced good results.

We let the sorrows be healed by the distance placed in the marking of the days, giving credence to the saying that "time heals all things." The passing of time brings a natural erosion to the negatives.

In retrospect, this past year for me was like many that came before it. I didn't burn much daylight without a mission of accomplishment for the many tasks at hand. That's another way of saying I was busier than I thought I wanted to be, but given my talent for making an art out of laziness, it was to my benefit.

By the very nature of my chosen field, deadlines reached out and pulled the near future into my lap on a daily basis and made each week pass as if I was pulling it with a rope, reaching hand over hand and bringing it to me.

Sometimes I could dictate the outcome of those days by my decisions of accomplishment but more often, I simply had to fly by the seat of my pants and live in a reactive moment.

The lesson being, the only control I had over the moment was in my response to it.

That holds true for each of us in a world that seems to be spinning faster than we can pedal.

We have little or no control over anything except us. That brings this missive back to the discussion of the plans for the days ahead.

You know, the ones with a new year number at the end of the date. What has begun within each of us today will be seed for tomorrow - no matter what the calendar says.

May your year be blessed with all that you need and most of what you want.