The new year is coming. The new year is coming.

Lots of people are hanging their hopes on the next digit in time.

For me, the new year is just a moment in time. A moment not unlike any other moment wherein a person looks to the future and wonders at its potential.

I rarely wait for the end of one year so that, in a wine-attled haze, I can resolve to be a better person in the beginning days of the next year.

Mostly I try to change the error of my ways as it occurs to me, whenever it occurs to me, lest I forget.

Not that it matters. I don't really change. My diet doesn't get better, my clothes don't become stylish. I don't keep up with the laundry or count to ten before I snap angrily at a child who annoys without intent.

I speak my mind even when my mind is telling me to shut up.

I'm always the same person I was yesterday, and the day before that and the year before that day. Even in the new year. So forth or hense. Whichever applies.

And yet, I'm one of those persons who THINKS they let things go, but in reality we tie our grievances to really long leashes just in case we need to haul them back in when it's cold or raining or otherwise inclement.

I'm not particularly proud of this.

Nor am I fond of the fact that I am a mule with the stubborn.

Fester. Fester. Fester. Rot. Rot. Rot.

A circle of misunderstanding and rage.

I didn't say the things you thought I said. I acquiesced.

Acquiescing rarely means agreeing fully or accepting with the power of ownership.

It just means giving in. It means compromise. Your desires don't just disappear, but your will to fight for them does.

When I bought Annabel an unfinished doll house I knew that she'd want to decorate it. I could have guessed she'd want to scribble on it with markers, or that she'd get tired midway through and stop being careful.

I would have left it alone. I would have wanted it to be clean and fresh and new -- the opposite of how I see my life and everything in it.

I couldn't help but to try and dissuade her from coloring it with the new princess markers and stampers. But she is not me. She has no qualms about what is or isn't pretty. She sees opportunity where I see the trap of imperfection.

And I back off.

It's not my house to decorate.

Now I'm trying to accept it for real and not just acquiesce.