A Life Less Resolute

“2011 will be the year in which I ….”

Can you complete that sentence yet?  Chances are, you can neatly slot in an answer inspired by your New Year’s resolutions.

Not me.  It’s not that I don’t have ideas for resolutions.  I’m certainly eligible for all the usual suspects:  eat less, drink less alcohol, go to bed earlier, exercise more.  But last year I didn’t actively make any resolutions, yet 2010 turned out to be one of the best years of my life.  It’s a formula I’m happy to repeat.

How did it happen?  Well, a radical resolution actually came at me from out of the blue, several days into the new year.   It was as sudden and unplanned as Newton’s apple falling on his head and, in my small sphere, about as revolutionary. I was in the first meeting of the year with my boss when I suddenly heard myself calmly tendering my resignation. It was unprovoked by her: we hadn’t had a row or a punch-up.   But in a light-bulb moment, I suddenly realised what I really wanted the new year to bring:  a better and less stressful work-life balance.  Amidst the sturm and drang of the Christmas break, spent caring for a very poorly daughter, this idea must have been churning away in my subconscious, but I simply hadn’t noticed.   I’m not sure which of us was the most surprised at my resignation – me or my boss.  But both of us recognised, several months down the line, that I was a happier, healthier person for this impulsive decision, and I’ve not had a single regret since.

So this year, I’m going to take the same approach.   Though I love the new beginnings and the promise that a new calendar brings, I don’t think New Year’s Day is the best time to make resolutions.   In any case, for most people in the UK, the word “RESOLVE” is inextricably associated with the commercial hangover cure of the same name – and probably quite a lot of them have consumed it today.   This doesn’t exactly create the most positive vibes.  Far better to let the freshness of the new year permeate the subconscious and see what surfaces at its leisure.

So watch this space.  Anything could happen in the next 365 days…

Happy New Year!

Write On

What new-fangled technology most irked the ancient Greek philosopher Plato?  Apparently it was the written word.  He feared that the spread of literacy would make people less reliant on their memory, causing their brains to atrophy.

Now that just about all of us can read and write, any discussion of memory is more likely to relate to computers rather than brains.  IT is certainly making us less reliant than our forefathers on the information we carry in our heads.

I’m old enough to remember the advent of the pocket calculator.  In 1973, my father bought, at vast expense, the revolutionary Sinclair Cambridge.  It was a very basic calculator by modern standards, but how we marvelled at it.

Image via Wikipedia

We preferred not to believe that it would dull our powers of mental arithmetic, but now that such things are commonplace, there must be few modern accountants capable of what my grandfather, working in the 1960s, could do: add a whole page of figures in his head.

To my mind, dimming the ability to memorise facts and add figures is not the main problem caused by our dependence on computers.  What worries me most is that future generations will lose out on archive material.  Paper may biodegrade in time, but it outlasts most computer chips and disks and is a lot more solid than ether.   Whose computer can still access the 5¼” floppy disks that were industry standard just 30 years ago?  Even the fact that we measured them in inches must seem laughably old-fashioned to the latest entrants to the workplace.   We set aside paper and pen at our peril.

So in your understandable enthusiasm to fill your recycling box every other Tuesday for our commendable village kerbside collection, think twice about throwing away every bit of paper.  At least hang on the 125^th Hawkesbury Show Schedule for posterity; guard safely this issue of the parish mag, especially if it mentions you by name.  In time, your grandchildren will thank you for it.

(Oh no, Debbie Young’s blog can only be accessed online!)

This post was originally published in the September 2010 issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News.