Another year is rapidly falling away. When I was a kid, years took a long time to pass. Not so anymore. Also, when I was a kid, the year 2000 was the future. Well, we all saw how that never really was a future at all. Just another year with bills, a regular job, and screaming kids running around (at least, that’s what it was for me).

So, here I am at the end of 2015 with bills, a regular job, and screaming kids running around.

Time takes everything away, they say. Somehow, that seems like resignation.

Yes, eventually, everything goes away. But normally you will need to do something to expedite that disappearance. For example, my workshop looks like someone else’s workshop exploded in it. Previously, I have promised to try to clean it up. Well, the news is I did clean it up, but then I started working in it.

That’s the problem with making things. It messes up the workshop.

And 2016 doesn’t look like the future, either. Instead, it looks like 2015. Rather, it will be 2015 until I get used to writing 2016. I expect that will happen sometime around March.

Oh, and I’m giving up completely the idea of new year’s resolutions. More than just introducing pointless challenges into your life, resolutions are simple guarantees of frustration and irritation. And a promise made under the influence of a calendar change can’t be taken seriously, at least not by me. Far better to resolve, like I did several months ago for example, to not crash any more cars. Drive more carefully, maybe you won’t need to buy yet another car.

I will take a more stoic approach to things this coming year. What that amounts to is simply not being bothered by what you need to do. A true stoic will see the tasks that are troublesome and irksome and irritating and he will… Actually, he’ll just look at something else. You know, if it bothers you, stop looking at it. That will be the new approach. See if it can get done on its own.

This can apply to all the projects in the house, too. Whenever I see something that I didn’t do or didn’t finish to my satisfaction, I’ll pick up a book of Norman Rockwell’s cheeky and poignant sketches, and I’ll have a little chuckle at the dog chasing its tail, the boy wearing his father’s hat, or the man who leaves his briefcase in the taxi. Truthfully, I don’t know if Norman Rockwell drew any of those things. But if he didn’t, he should have, because they are just so darned witty.

Actually, I’ve proven I don’t need to adopt any such attitude. I already get distracted easily enough.

Now, while it is more fun to think of reasons to not do something, the fact of the situation is this coming year will see a lot of work done on this house of mine, simply because there is no choice. If I’d realized the weather was going to be as good as it’s been, I would have had a lot of outside work done this fall. Now, that will have to start in the spring. And the roof will need to be reshingled this year or it’s bound to fail.

The needs of a burgeoning reality trump the frothy whipped cream fantasies of both resolutions and the excuses for not following through on them.

That was one of the unfortunate things about the future when it came around. It had all the strong demands the past did, just with more cell phones.