Unending beginning

I feel like I've hurtled into the new year the way a speeding car goes round a blind corner. One (figurative) minute it was 2008, the next it was '09. Perhaps it was because the new year started on a Thursday. Not properly the beginning of a week, or the end, but the day that rushes into the weekend.

Whatever the case, somehow I now find myself a few days into 2009 not quite knowing what hit me and trying to regain my bearings after a bevvy of church and social activities, a wedding, and a concert. Phew! But all the same, if the rest of this year follows the same way, I think I shall quite enjoy the (rather surreal) experience of scenery rushing by me. The only thing is, I fear I have already broken my resolutions before I've even had a chance to take a breather and make them properly.

Perhaps it's because of the manner in which I have hurtled into this year, or the fact that I'm aging significantly, but I no longer feel the sense of rejuvenating new-ness that I used to when a new year heralded. Although theoretically it should be a year of changes and sparkling potential, things of the past remain like the stubborn stains that ingrain themselves onto the insides of mugs. Tea stains, coffee stains, and soup stains; I've all but given up trying to rinse them away. The same old struggles continue to plague me, and the same bittersweet aftertaste remains from drinking of it. My cup is my cup, and I'm not really averse to it being a bit old after a couple decades use.

All in all, I feel older and more tired, yet stronger and more wiry. Somewhere between cynicism and naivete, self-consciousness and laissez faire. Not quite ready for novelty, but not opposed to it either, insides still churning from the sharp direction change as I've rounded the corner of 2008.