A male guest in our all female household took a shower and afterwards said:

"You know what 'exfoliate' means? That there's sand in the soap."

Recently I watched Total Recall. The original one. With the Govenator. Circa 1990. And they have video phones in the movie. Which made me remember thinking, at the time, when I still had to hand write my reports for school, “That would be so cool.”

Yesterday I Skyped with a friend in another state for two hours without a thought. How did video phoning sneak up on us like that? Did anyone even notice? According to Uber-facts.com, “Today's average smartphone has more computing power than the first space shuttle ever produced.” I don’t know if that’s true but it’s got to be close to true.

Think about it.

PG: Hey Nacho, what’s your favorite snack food?

Nacho: When the fantasy has ended/ and all the children are gone/ Something good inside of me/ helps me to carry on.

PG: Singing? Oh…okay. You’re really going to--

Nacho: I ate some bugs/ I ate some grass/ I used my hand, to wipe…

PG: Whoa.

Nacho: my tears/  O Pistachios! / Pistachios! Pistachios! (diddle-diddle-dee, diddle-diddle-dee) O Pistachios!

PG: Good choice. Nice and healthy.

Nacho: When I am eating at the party. Everyone is dancing, happy, party.
But Nacho is not dancing, he does not dance at the party. Where are the pistachios?

PG: You really love them, don’t you?

Nacho: At night I play my games/ I go to sleep, I think of pistachios/ The people in the street/ they eating treats, they eating candies.

PG: Any other favorites?

Nacho: Pistachios, number one/ the secret of desire/ RAPAPAPAPILIAPUPALIAPUPPA/ Pistachios, number one/ they put the people all on fire/ RAPAPAPAPILIAPUPALIAPUPPA/ Pistachios, number one/ eat them on the playa/ RAPAPAPAPILIAPUPALIAPUPPA

PG: Alrighty then. I’m gonna go with no.

San Francisco has lots of street art. Some of it is commissioned and some of it is rogue. These ones I think are my favorite. I have seen these all over SF and every time I find them it just makes me smile. If anyone knows the artist tell him or her thank you for me.

You know why? Because time is arbitrary. January 1st only has meaning because we as a society have decided to attribute meaning to it. Scientifically speaking there is no more difference between December 31st and January 1st than any other change of days.

Of all the cultural systems of tracking time the Gregorian/Western calendar has got to be the least practical of them. Most other cultures had the good sense to base their time trackers on celestial events. For convenience sake I will put the blame on the Roman Empire. (I’m talking to you Julius and Augustus.) The Chinese celebrate their New Year in February. The Aztec calendar starts in our March, Jewish is September, and Celtic is October.

[Fireworks just went off outside my house. Yep it’s 00:00 as I write this.]

My favorite is the Celtic philosophy. They start their New Year in the fall, when everything is dying and going into hibernation. Death is a necessary start for new life. Remove the old and make room for the new. My experience has been that major interior shifts happened in September. Eventually it migrated to March. Because I think the universe has a sense of irony it is currently January.

Having said all of that, I do think there is great value in ritual and by ritual I mean habit.  If you have already spent the last ten years attempting change in January then your brain is prepped for this. You should definitely take advantage of that. Creating new habits or stopping bad ones for most goals will be a must.

My question to you is if you haven’t already made the choice to change what difference will Jan. 1 make? Unless the goal of your resolution has become obsolete you can review and try again any day of the year you need to. I believe absolutely that we should all resolve to change.  But don’t let an arbitrary date stop you from making that choice.