INSTIGATING LOGIC
Happy New Year
By JARED PUTNAM

The start of a new year always seems like something of a double-edged sword to me. In some ways it always feels tedious. When I think about all the stuff that happens within 12 months, everything that has to get done, I’m always hesitant to see time push the reset button on the calendar.

Of course I realize that its purely a psychological thing, and that it really is no different starting a new January than it is starting a new April or October. Besides, it’s not like any of us can really say, “You know what, I’m just going to hang back in 2006 for a while, I’ll catch up to you guys later.” That only happens in the sense that it takes time for most of us to get used to writing a new year on our checks.

Even if we could hold off the new year, who would want to? The days between Christmas and New Years Day always feel like lame duck days to me. All the shopping, traveling, and gathering come to an end. Nothing really happens aside from taking down Christmas decorations and watching vacation days speed by.

Maybe it’s too sentimental, but around this time each year I always find myself looking back on the past year and wondering what will happen, both in my own personal life, and in world events, in the coming year. You have to wonder what major events will take place in 2007, and who will be the key figures that make history.

As we look back on 2006, memories of world events will likely never stray too far from the topic of Iraq. If it had faded into the background any whatsoever during the holidays, it was dragged right back to the forefront by the hanging of Saddam Hussein. Even an election in which the Democrats reclaimed control of both houses of Congress can be closely tied to the situation in Iraq.

On the Union County level, the 2006 alcohol vote is something that stands out in my mind, along with some of the negative things that were so out of the ordinary, such as the robberies, burglaries, and bomb threats.

The nice thing about the new year is that it is pretty much universally seen as an opportunity for change toward the better. Every year, millions of Americans make any number of new year’s resolutions, often resolving to exercise more, eat healthier, or break a bad habit. Naturally, two weeks later that surge of willpower crashes back to earth and the vast majority of those resolutions fail.

What may be most remarkable is just how much situations can change from moment to moment, much less year to year. In my own life it seems like circumstances are very different year to year.

When I was in school I thought of each year by what grade or class I was entering, or if I was making the transition from high school to college, or undergraduate to graduate work.

Since I began working at the Union Sentinel I tend to think of things more in terms of what is happening in the news each new year, or how things have changed at the paper. Needless to say, the start of 2007 is quite a bit different from the beginning of 2006.

I'm a perfectionist, so I always see things that I wish I was able to devote more time toward, or look back on things that I could have done a better job with. Then again, there is only so much you can do while still trying to maintain some semblance of a personal life. But all in all I’m satisfied with the contributions and changes I was able to make to this newspaper in 2006 and hope to continue to do that in 2007.