At lunch yesterday, a friend stated "I get more done in January than in the rest of the whole year." I claimed twinsee because, so do I. If a cluttered closet or stuffed cabinet is going to be addressed, it's got a 90% better chance in January than any other month. For me to tackle Big Deal Projects any other time of year it takes some sort of nasty push - like - cobwebs in the kitchen or m***s in the yarn stash room. But in January - ahhh. In January I indulge in the faint and unrealistic exercise of Hope. Hope that I can be Perfect. Hope that I can be More Cool. That really was a New Year's Resolution back when I was in 10th or 11th grade. I thought I knew what made people cool and if I just did those things, hey - I too could be More Cool. Though - now that I hear what I've just typed, for the very first time I see the comparative word "more" in that adolescent yearning. I already thought I was cool. I just wanted to be More Cool.The only paving stone to More Coolness I can remember, from that long ago list, was to learn the names of all the Motown artists. That was the music of choice in my little Catholic girls school and everyone else in school seemed to know all the names of the Temptations, while I didn't know any of them. I just liked their music. Evidently, coolness involved knowledge of cool topics above and beyond the enjoyment of them. I still do like jumping into new avenues of creativity and learning everything I can about them - "Bess's Passions", as BD calls them. I just don't care any more, if people think I'm cool. Or even More Cool.
Usually I'm already plotting out my path into More Coolness in December so that by January I'm ready to write down my lists of steps and start dancin'. This year Christmas was so luxuriously mellow and cozy I'm only now getting my thoughts (and act) together. The biggest shift is changing my morning routine - to spend less time frittering here on the Internets, but Other Ideas are beginning to surface, bubbling up from the deep morass of TheQueen's psyche. As January calendar pages flutter to the ground, like so many snowflakes, who's to tell just how cool I'll become?
So. Just what does it take for you to feel More Cool, hmmm?
I'll admit it: I've never been Cool, and certainly not 'More Cool'. I knew it then, and I know it now. Despite wanting to be (while trying to be blase about it), I never mastered the art of Cool. I think it requires a certain laid-back approach to life, and one thing I have never been is laid back! Didn't have a clue how to be so, even. Heck, only now, in my 50s, am I even remotely spontaneous!
ReplyDeleteYes, I remember forcing myself as a young teen to listen to "Top 40" (when what I really preferred was the classical music on WCLV) because I thought it would make me cooler. It didn't work. (And now I am hearing songs I disliked on their first popularity being referred to as "classic rock." As if.)
ReplyDeleteI've decided recently that if age brings me any good thing, it is freedom from having to worry whether people think I am "cool" or not.