The art of the new year

I don't know about you, but my absolutely favorite thing about the new year is the calendar.

I LOVE new calendars, ones which still allow me an infinity of opportunities, ones where appointments aren't made and then remade and then scratched out yet again, ones where every single page is a blank slate.

Each year I begin with a perfect calendar, one which I am  determined to keep pristine. I use the same pen, the same type of printing, the same color. I keep the writing carefully between the lines. It looks perfect and that's what I want.

But it's never very long (sometimes even before the new year actually begins) before I'm using whiteout, carefully deleting the old appointment waiting for the white to dry before putting in the new. Not long after that, I'm scratching things out with ferocious pen strokes.

I'll start using red pens and green pens and black ones. I'll ignore the lines because some days I have too much to do to stay within those tiny squares. Generally, somewhere around March, I give up on the tidy calendar - and the tidy life - and revert to the mess which my calendar always becomes.

What I want and what I get with respect to my calendars are two completely different things - maybe a metaphor for life in general?

Kate