January 2, 2015

Today is January Second.

I'm thinking about the new year in front of me now that the New Year holiday is over.


January is named for Janus; a deity that looked backward and forward at the same time. 

This is a good time for reflection, and my thought is that I've given that deity way too much of my time; years of too much time.  I've been looking back and looking forward too, but mostly I've been looking rather than doing.  I should stop it, rather than trying to figure out why I do this.

So, considering why, as I'm wont or I want to do, and taking a moment to do more looking back, what I want to do is to think of all the past events that got me here, the available paths running off in many directions and then decide, as if there is a right and a wrong, which way to go.  Apparently it's easier for me to try and be right than to venture into the future, making decisions, which is really the only way to actually do anything.  That's sad.  But as I continue to think, let me think of that supposition in order to attempt to minimize its power over me.

Whether the past was good or bad, and apparently I feel the need to evaluate everything and clearly it and everything else is a huge amount of both, it can't be changed.  The future isn't one path that was chosen over another, but a series of choices not yet made, or never to be made, if I just think about, but actually don't do any of them. 

Looking back, still (which was my word for 2014) I wonder what would have happened a few years ago in a year in which the second falls on a Friday, as it does today:





Friday, January 2, 2015

When I worked disability claims, I remember vividly The Christmas Miracle!  It happened every year!  And it was truly as miraculous as anything I witnessed in that morass of daily grind.

Nearly every claim submitted from November through the end of the year requested disability through the first workday after New Year's Day.  It was absolutely amazing!  Whether the person had a hernia, a broken finger, a major operation, drug addiction, depression... or got shot in the head while sleeping in their bed, like the very first claim that I ever worked by myself...it didn't matter!  Every doctor apparently anticipated, nearly without fail, the advent of the timely Christmas Miracle!  For it was estimated that the poor disabled person, regardless of any particular, would need, as a medical necessity, to get through the Holidays without working, and then would be able to return to work right after; I mean nearly always, right after, as in the very next day.

Pregnant?  Well, the doctors think you'll need until the first working day in January to recover. 

Comatose?  Well, you should be alright by then too. 

Amazing recoveries were expected all around the country, and testified to in medical and legal documents to occur at exactly the same time.

Jesus' birth that we organized the millennia around into B.C. and A.D, still determines every disabled individual's work schedule.  And isn't that what we all do individually as well?  We take a little vacation, feeling like we need to remove ourselves from normal time and go into The Holiday Time? 

So this year, when the Second is on a Friday, what are the doctors saying?  Is this enough time to get back to work?  Are they confused this year?  Who returns to work on a Friday?

I bet everybody's counting on being back on schedule; back to work, by Monday.

I bet when the Monday is the third, the Christmas Miracle extends until then.



Whatever the first working day happens to be after the first; that's when the Christmas Miracle ends.



New Year, New You.