New Year 2013

Happy New Year.

Something I have learned from writing these greetings across twenty years and then reading them back: you never know at the time which years will turn out to be the important ones.

The years that felt significant while I was living them were often the ordinary ones with a personal event attached. The years that turned out to matter were sometimes ones I remember as unremarkable, where something began quietly that only became visible later.

So I have stopped trying to characterise a year in advance. A greeting on the first of January is not a forecast. It is just a wish, offered to people who will find out what the year contains at the same speed I do.

A good one to your household.