I've said it before and others with me, that September is like a new year in terms of the resolutions and plans one makes for the coming season. Yes, people make resolutions and plans for the calendar new year but it's different. It's more like girding one's loins and gritting one's teeth for a renewed attack, not a fresh project. New lists help, though they're much like the old lists, Cross off a few items, add some new, underline and star the nagging ones that are still unfinished - or never started? What do you do for a kickstart on a tired list?

Well,what a start! I had to recharge the battery, came back and wrote a conclusion to discover that i wasn't logged on so I lost it. I'm home now and I'll try to recap what I said. I think I was explaining why I was pretty tolerant of weak resolutions because 45 years ago I succeeded at a major resolve - to quit smoking. It was hard but I never started again. That resolution was a promise, one of the synonyms of resolution. (I looked it up.)

Resolution: intention, resolve, decision, intent. aim, commitment, pledge, promise. Well, a promise to myself but maybe a pledge to my children. (It worked: none of them smokes.)

So that's what we do at this time of year. We go on, we go on. (I've said that before.)

It's a bipolar time of year, and the month, of course, is named after the two-faced god, Janus, looking in two directions, backwards and forwards. So, as I look back and forth, I am bipolar, depressed and lethargic, as I have been for several weeks now, and also (I hope) energetic and optimistic, if not quite happy. Not yet. Jonathan Swift said that happiness was a state of being well-deceived. That makes me think of Candide looking at everything with his rose-coloured glasses (is that what they were?) and saying "Lovely, lovely". With or without deceptive glasses, you look with different eyes at different objects and arrange your feelings and judgements accordingly. I can't recommend unwavering optimism, but I don't believe you should dwell on disaster. Good days and bad days. I'm still trying to work it out and hang in there. So a new month/year is a challenge. Which way are you going to call it? Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life. Remember that? Remember that!

Happy whatever.