New Year's Day, 2026

 

Suburban Clock & Repair, Berea, Ohio

      Thinking about New Year's Day and seeking inspiration, I looked at the past few years on EGD — not bad  — then did a deep dive, pulling my Waterstone's Literary Diary for 1986 down, to see what I was up to 40 years ago.
     My brother and I were in Berea, where my parents were holding one last New Year's Eve party before moving to Boulder, where they would live for 35 years. On Dec. 31 we made the rounds of our hometown, going to the barber shop where we had gotten our first haircuts, sitting on a board that had a horse's head on it, to bring us up to proper height for cutting.
     "Sam & I —shaven at barber's, drinks at Ledge's, nice small town feel," I wrote. "Barbers —Tony, Tom —wished us 'boys' well, shook hands."
     My father must have been force-feeding me tales of his youth, as was his practice, and I was taking notes that would become "Don't Give Up the Ship" a dozen years later.
     "My father told of being a young boy in New York and wanting to go to Europe ... running down the Grand Concourse, thinking self a light cruiser in a world of battleships and heavy destroyers."
     I don't believe that image made the book — a pity, because it is a sweet one, a defining quality of youth, that nimbleness, darting around lumbering obstacles. I guess I'm a dreadnaught now, blasting my low horn at the speedy cigarette boats as they flash past.
     I was 25, living in Oak Park, writing a novel, working at Graham Hayward & Associates, a tiny  Lincolnwood advertising agency, a "curious pace. Sales reps have full bar. Music in each room. Little pressure to produce." 
     Best not to get lost in the minutia of the past. The red Waterstone journal had quotes every week — hence a "Literary Diary" — and I, fond of snippets from minds sharper than my own, would write more down on the endpapers or, in this case, save time by snipping out a newspaper clipping and taping it on the page. From "Man and Superman" by George Bernard Shaw:

     "This is the true joy of life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."

     The key phrase in the above "recognized by yourself." You can't expect the world to countersign what you find important. You have to know it, in your own heart, and proceed with confidence. Maybe they catch on. Maybe they won't. Probably they won't.

      That's a thought to hold close as we boldly march into a new year. Or timidly tiptoe. Or somewhere in between.