Days of Future Present

2013. The year in which Snake Plissken has to reluctantly fight his way across the island of Los Angeles, meting out nonchalant smackdowns to retrieve a MacGuffin. The few surviving graduates of Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters will become the Anti-Sentinel Resistance in an attempt to avert a nuclear holocaust. And Kevin Costner will wander the desolate wastelands of Oregon, trying to scrape together food and water in return for performances of Shakespearean plays. Perhaps the most terrifying iteration of the next 365 days of them all. Welcome to the human race. Meanwhile, back in the real world...

I always try to start the year with some kind of statement of intent. In 2011, it was all about laying low. Keeping my head down, keeping a steady course. Feel free to pick your own lazy pre-cooked metaphor. Basically, I just needed to get through 2011 in one piece. And, with that humble non-ambition, I succeeded.

Last year was different. I started 2012 feeling stronger and hungry for more. It was time to start building things up again. So I did. Have I achieved as much as I’d hoped to by the end of 2012? No. But that’s OK. It’s that whole reach-grasp thing. No matter how much I do, I’ll never be satisfied that it’s enough. I got a helluva lot done, just not as much as I’d planned to. Still, on balance, I can treat this as a qualified success.

Which brings us all up to date. And...I can’t quite work out what the shape of 2013 is yet. I need to take a long, hard dispassionate look at the groundwork I laid last year and intensify my efforts there. I can smell change in the offing, but I can’t tell what or when or how. I just have a strong sense that I won’t be in the same place in my life this time next year. We shall see.

As usual, I’ve got a lot to do. But maybe, this time, it ain’t what I do, it’s the way that I do it. And I think this time, I’ll play it all with a little Bangkok Rules...