Happy New Year

This is me by about 10pm on any New Year's Eve since the Millennium  - which is the last time R and I were invited to a NYE party. (That, by the way, was more of a boast than a plea for sympathy.) The extra, with the trippier bokeh, is me by about 10pm on any New Year's Eve which has involved a superfluity of prosecco - but that will not be happening tonight.

As is now our NYE tradition, R and I chose a favourite restaurant and went out for lunch today, over which we reminded each other of the good things that have happened to us this year - places we've been, interesting things we've seen, and for me my happiest photo opportunities of 2018. It was a great way to highlight how much we have to be grateful for.

We didn't make any resolutions - I'm fully in agreement with whoever it was who said that failure is so built in to the concept of a New Year resolution that it's essentially just a stick to beat yourself up with. But I do like the idea of journeying towards a goal, and I also like the goal, which I heard nicely expressed on the podcast Pod Save America (highly recommended, if you can listen to what sounds like a quartet of the younger characters in The West Wing without wanting to weep for the state of real-life politics in this era) of living your values.

So in 2019 I'll be aiming towards living my values - which, whatever the particular area of life, be it social, political, environmental, etc., pretty much add up to "Try not to be horrible". Put like that it doesn't sound like an unclimbable mountain. And as it fits in pretty neatly with the Blipfoto ethos, one of the places I'll be trying not to be horrible next year is here.

I wish you a pleasant New Year's Eve, and hope that 2019 brings peace and contentment to all of us.