The year that was and the year that will be

The year that was and the year that will be – 2016 to 2017

My – the year has flown so fast. I remember as a child my parents would say – “As you get older the years seem to go so much faster”. They were right – as I start to leave my young adolescent years behind (I can hear my wife scoff at this and mention that I must have a terrific memory if I can remember my adolescent years) – the years are flying past faster and faster. I wonder what it will be like when I enter my middle years (again my wife is making some comment that if this is my middle years then I must be aiming to live until 150 years of age).

This is the time of the year when I have a tendency to go for long walks on the beach with my dogs and think about the year that was and the year that will be. I look over the last 12 months and wonder if I have progressed in my life and then I look to the future and wonder what I will achieve over the next 12 months (will I fly to the moon, will I climb Mt Everest, will I dive to the deepest depths of the oceans, will I finally get my wife to appreciate me, will I get clients who will follow directions, will the staff respect me and will the tax man forget to collect the BAS).

2016 – Was it a good year for you?

I have asked a lot of my clients over the last few weeks if this year has been good. As a general census – nearly everyone said they will be glad to see the back of 2016. The reasons vary a lot from health issues, money issues, work issues, weather issues etc. but nearly every person I have talked to is looking forward to ‘next year’. 

From a personal view point 2016 has been very challenging, I have learnt a lot over the last 12 months, but I know I will be a better person for those lessons. When I look back I try to only see the good side of life – the wonderful owners I have been fortunate to meet, the animals that have come into my life and the enjoyment I get out of trying to help every one of them to live a healthy and happy life. The staff that I work with every day who enjoy their work and love interacting with the animals and the owners, the fact that I am still healthy and reasonably fit (again my wife is scoffing in the background). Yes – I have had a good year (especially in comparison to a lot of other people of the world) and I hope to have a good year next year.

So what will 2017 be like for you? Have you really thought about it or do you just ‘wing it’ ?

I intend to start the new year with a few good New Year Resolutions – it is easy to come up with a list of these because I can use the same New Year Resolutions I used last year (and the last 10 years) because I did not achieve any of them so instead I just recycle them.

• Lose weight – every year I promise myself that I will lose a few kilos (or as my wife mentions – a lot of kilos). This usually means starving myself for the first few days while jumping on the weighing machine every morning waiting for the weight to just fall off. Usually I include some fad diet that includes oxygen, pure mist water only found in the high altitudes of the Himalayans and transported by 1000 year old casks on the back of Yaks that have been especially bred for this journey, some weird form of green-leafed plant that was discovered in the ice of the Antarctic and has been cloned and grown in  a mystical island off the coast of New Zealand plus some special herbs only found in a volcano in Hawaii that can only be harvested once every blue moon when the volcano stops erupting long enough for the local trip to put on asbestos boots, parachute down the inside of the volcano and collect the herbs before igniting their jetpacks so that they can fly out of the crater.

Usually what happens is that I lose a kilo or two in the first few days, become so weak that I struggle to get out of bed, feel like the weight of the world is on my back, drag myself out to the fridge – find a steak and eat it raw because is am sick of having a green tinge around the mouth and feel like that volcano has transported itself into my large intestine every time I go to the toilet.

Then I console myself with the thought – I can always start the diet next week, next month or even next year.

• Get fit – now that is a resolution that I have used going back to the dark ages when I was a boy (just after the dinosaur era). Every year I charge off to the gym, sign up for another 12 months, jump onto the first machine I can find free (usually the gyms are full of people with new year resolutions and finding a machine free in the first week can be difficult but for the rest of the year – any machine you want and any time) and “go like the clappers”.

I will often stay for over 2 hours on the first day, one hour on the second day, have an hour on the third day, 10 minutes total over the next week and ask for my money back in the 3^rd week.

Usually a combination of weakness, soreness, embarrassment, boredom mixed with the emotion of horror (when I see myself in the mirrors that gyms seem to enjoy having) leads me to not going to the gym very often.

Needless to say – within a few weeks I am as fat as I always was, I am as unfit as I always was and my wife is enjoying telling everyone at dinner parties about my attempts (at least one of us is happy).