I have made no formal New Year’s resolutions. The ones I made last year will have to serve. If I fail in them…well, then it will be a noble failure. I have some ideas, some plans I’ve been kicking around, and if nothing else they should keep me writing. I will endeavor to write more this year. I will try to finish what I start.
Right now, though, I’m faced with the knowledge that I can’t put off sleep for much longer. I do not want to go to bed, because, if I do, then I will have to go to work in the morning.
I may also have to attend a funeral tomorrow evening for a coworker’s young son, and that seems like a terrible way to start the new year. I can barely imagine that kind of loss, the sort of grief that accompanies the death of a child. I want to extend my sympathies, but I don’t want to attend the services if I’m not wanted there. I don’t know this man terribly well — I never even knew his son’s name, much less that he was sick — and I don’t want to intrude if the family would rather keep its grief private. I suppose there is no right or wrong response — and this should be about them, not me — but I do not know what I will do.
And so I’ve been sitting here for half an hour now, typing and retyping these lines, avoiding sleep even as I feel it creeping closer. I don’t feel ready to face these particular parts of the new year. I don’t want to go to work tomorrow, which my clock now informs me is today. I just want to sleep late, stay in bed, and avoid the messiness that comes with life.
But I guess vacation time is over. Time to see what 2003 is really made of.