The first thing I did after midnight last night was the traditional replacement of the calendars. It’s a ritual that I go through, even though I hardly ever refer to the calendars on the wall. I have online calendars where I keep track of the few appointments I ever have, and a day-timer that I carry around with me and hardly ever write in. And now I have a digital picture frame with a built-in calendar that sits on my desk. But I still usher in the new year by putting up new wall calendars, and of course my Daily Sudoku calendar on top of the water cooler.

As each January 1 comes and goes, I go back and forth on whether making new year’s resolutions is a good thing or not. Some years I’m all gung ho on changing my life. Other years I’m with the apparent majority who think it’s pointless to make promises to no one in particular on any given date, whether it’s New Year’s Day or Groundhog Day or April 31.

This year I’m kind of apathetic about it all, maybe because I can’t think of anything I really want to commit myself to, unless it’s getting on that treadmill a little more often. Once in the last three weeks is not enough, that’s for sure. But it was the holidays, and now, without that lame excuse, I can get back to the routine that I was in before I skidded to a stop. It’s not a resolution, though. It’s just something I planned to do sooner or later, regardless of the date.

Today was the kind of low key day that I need a little more often in my life. I didn’t have to do anything, so I didn’t do much. But since I didn’t feel compelled to do anything, I didn’t mind the couple of hours of work I put in on the new payroll tables, or the time I spent straightening some of the clutter around the house. I mean, it’s not as if I dusted, or anything as disagreeable as that.