How can it possibly be December? Somewhere I have lost a couple months. Apparently it has to do with the mild weather we have experienced this fall. Most years by this time we have a good snow cover, the lakes are frozen solid enough to drive on and we have settled in for the long winter. This year is different. It is December 2nd and we don’t have snow, the lakes are not very much frozen over unless it happen last night, but I suspect the roaring wind we have had for the past 24 hours slowed the freezing process down, at least on the larger lakes.
Many people will attribute this mild year to “global warming”, that great evil caused by our modern society. I will agree that we are having a warming trend over the last quarter century or so, but I will not agree on the “cause” of it. I am also no scientist and would not represent myself as an “authority” on climate changes.
I do consider myself a ‘student of history’. It is history the convinces me that the earth’s warming and cooling trends are a natural phenomenon that occurs from time to time. But this is not the point of my post.
I think of December as the “old man of the year”. Whatever has taken place during the year is mostly “history” by the time December rolls around. Not that we have not had major events happen in December, but the mindset we develop is one of winding down the past year and making plans for the New Year. Naturally the holiday season from Thanksgiving through New Years also has an affect on the way we view December. There are a lot of holiday activities that take place during this time, more than any other time of the year.
For me December is generally a “hard month”. No, it is not from ‘holiday trauma’, as some might think, that would be those who know me. I pretty much ignore a lot of the hoopla that goes with the “Holidays”. Not that I don’t enjoy seeing children get gifts, that is a pleasure even to an “old scrooge”, such as myself will never tire of. I was a youngster once. You can have full assurance that I was as excited as anyone to get some “goodies” for Christmas and I have fond memories of that excitement. Furthermore, I can think of at least two items that my parents gave me for Christmas as a youth, that I still have in my possession and don’t plan to part with anytime soon. One, is an old .410 single shot H & R shotgun that I got for Christmas in 1969. It was used even then, but to a 12 year old ‘what-a-be’ hunter, it made not difference what sort of firearm it was, it was “mine”. It hangs in a place of honor on my wall. The other item came from the same Christmas and is what we called a “coal oil lantern”. It leaks oil if I try to use it, but it sits in an outbuilding and I have not seen fit to part with it yet. I have a lot of memories every time I see that old lantern. It was with that dim light that I remember going out to milk my cow on cold December mornings before school. For many years it was my main light for camping or any other dark outdoor activities. For children, Christmas is an exciting time and I am not one to throw cold water on the tradition.
December is stressful for other reasons. We lose a lot of daylight very quickly from the 1st of the month to the end of it. I suppose December must be the “darkest” month of the year. For people who have much of their work to be done in the great outdoors, daylight is a precious commodity. By mid-month in MN we are hard pressed to get a full 9 hours of daylight, it being almost 8 AM before it is light enough to see well enough to inspect lumber and by 4:30 PM, we will have our headlights on when driving. I suppose it is a good thing the month has the interruption of Christmas activities or people would go “batty”, even more than they do, in December.
One thing is sure, we have to endure the ’death of a year’ by having the month of December, in order to reach January, that first month a New Year, when so many people make all kinds of “short-lived” resolutions, even if they are made in total sincerity. For a long time, I have swore off making New Year’s resolutions, simply because it seems so “lame”, at least in my mind. For truth be told, if I want to resolve to ‘do something’, I find it is best to “do it now”, than put it off until a certain day on the calendar, for by the time that day arrives, I will likely have lost my motivation to make a change anyway.
There is one thing I like to do at the end of December. Rather than resolving to change habits or form new ones, I find it useful to go over in my mind the events of the year just past. Therein I am dealing with factual “history” rather than “fanciful plans”. By thinking over my past year, I do sometimes find helpful hints as to what I should do in the coming year and so approach the new year as if it was a “new day” to start fresh, but with some solid guidance by having the experience of recent history.
Being a self-employed person makes the reflection very personal. It is not as if I have an employer who will set my working hours and pay me accordingly. I am the ‘employer’ as well as the ‘employee’. That creates opportunities as well as ‘hazards’. The opportunity is that I can pretty much plan my own course of action to advance my business affairs and work just as hard as I want, in order to accomplish whatever new “bright ideal” I have for the coming work year. But on the same hand there is the “hazard”, and it is a “big hazard”, especially this year. The hazard of self-employment is that it is very easy to loose our ambition. The current state of economic reality makes it extremely hard to have a positive attitude that next year will hold any hope of a better economic environment than 2011.
At the end of every December I go over my business records and compare my sales and business activity to prior years, I don’t know if I have the “heart” to do that this year. I already know what it will look like, sort of like the “morning after” a train wreck. I have to ask the question; “will next year improve”? The answer is ‘blowing in the wind’, I have no reason to expect that it will and the “wishing well” does nothing to advance the course of reality. Do I make drastic changes? If so, what?
These questions are what make December a stressful month for me. Maybe it is a good thing that we have the “holiday season” to distract us from all the things, that we know, we are going to have to make decisions about.
I have reached an age that makes the decision process more difficult than it was when I was in the prime of my youth. During those years of our lives, for most people, we have lots of ambition and there is not much that can drag us down for very long, if we need to make drastic changes, it is just a matter of waking up one morning and putting into action our plan and the consequences will take care of themselves, we have all the confidence in the world that if we do make a miscalculation, we have plenty of time ahead of us to overcome whatever setback we might endure. Not so when we reach mid-50’s, with time speeding up, as if it went from a steam power, to jet engine speeds in just a few years time.
The joke is on us. When we are young we look at older folks, and think, they have lived their lives and are content to take to their rocking chair and enjoy the memories of their youth, while watching their children and grandchildren, to see how they get along in this “short life”. Now when I see that “rocking chair”, I want to throw it out the window! I have too many things to get done. That chair will be without me for the next 50 years! Of course, I don’t have 50 years, so the old chair will have to rock its own self, if it gets rocked. I have too many things to get done before the “grim reaper” gets the hook in me. But first, I have to make it through December!
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