When I was younger, say from my early teens to my late twenties, the dawning of a new year gave me intense anxiety. I wasn’t worried about the coming year, but I was incredibly bothered by the loss of the year that was. Even at the time I would have had difficulty articulating exactly what it was that troubled me so, and when I think back on it now it hasn’t become any clearer. All I can really say is that both New Year’s Even and New Year’s Day were not easy days for me. I’ve never been particularly good at letting anything go, and the thought that it would never, ever, ever be 1991 again, for example, truly pained me.

For the past very many years I’ve barely given any consideration at all to the flipping over of a new calendar–beyond the dismay that we all feel as we grow older at how quickly time flies. I suppose it would be easy to attribute it to the changes in my life since I moved to Sweden, but I don’t think that’s it, really. Probably a lot of it has to do with my transformation to a type B personality–in which, of course, Sweden certainly plays a role, but I think it’s more just growing up in general.

Well, that and the Zoloft.