Busy as hell; such is the nature of December. It’s the holiday season, the time of year I most dread. The rush of it, the commercialism no one bothers pretending isn’t the reason for the season anymore, the crowds and the rush.

I cannot bear a crush of people. This is why I shop online. Forced to the stores, when possible I hit them at off hours, 24-hour mega-stores my best friends. No one but employees are there after 10:00 p.m. Miserable employees and me, studiously ignoring me happily tossing veggies and wrapping paper, dog food and strings of colored lights into my cart.

What cannot be bought at Amazon must be bought near midnight.

At work it’s no better. Making themselves the little giant of their industry, my Day Job employer has created a tsunami influx of new clients. But that’s job security, you say. Oh, yes, it is. But when you’re understaffed and struggling to keep your head above water, it’s frustrating and overwhelming. It’s crushing and pressing, exhausting and bruising.

 

In the midst of this swell of activity, it’s in December I find myself most introspective. 2017 has been one hell of a year. I’ve not had time to come to grips with all of it before 2018 has already started breathing down my neck.

I want 2018 to be interestingly crazy, but maybe this time a sort of controlled interestingly crazy. Can that even be? You cannot plan Great Adventures, not of the truly grand sort, and this time last year I’d have done a spit-take had anyone told me what 2017 would bring.

Sheer insanity.

What I want for 2018 is something as wild and unexpected as 2017, just without the unpleasant bits. Sitting here with a calendar and journal, the OCD me wants to draft a game plan for the upcoming year. At the same time, I fully realize the futility of that.

My best-laid plans will go awry.

This is precisely what I want.

I want 2018 to showcase the insanity of my life. I want it to test my limits, to dare me. What I wish is I’ll find myself sitting, either here or in another charming little local coffeehouse in another part of the world, stabbing at the keyboard about how 2018 was absolutely gob-smacking, how it put 2017 to positive SHAME.

I’ll still plot out my cute little plans, think about what I hope to achieve in the New Year, but I do so with no thought it’s likely to transpire. Actually, I’m rather gleefully hoping it will not.

How boring if it did.

I’d like to cap this year, to at least stack it so the edges don’t keep jutting out, cutting me as I try to skirt it. I have a feeling that’s much easier said than done. Still, the urge to beat it to death in writing. It’s frustrating how impossible it is to wrap up life in a neat little package, but it would be nice at least to organize it, wouldn’t it?

Happy scribbling, planning, navel-gazing season. Here’s to all that end of year could have, would have, should have instant replaying. I’m setting myself up for welcoming 2018, lining up the pretty pens and pristine Moleskine notebook.

For the first time ever, I see how goofy it really is. That doesn’t stop me, but sometimes you just have to laugh. It’s that or succumb, and I am not doing that.

Not an option.

Happy holiday season. May it not drive you screaming madly into the dark.