First Day Superstitions

I'm weirdly superstitious about New Year's Day. I believe in eating my blackeyed peas. This brings you good fortune for the year. I also believe that what you do on the first day of the year will reflect what you do for the rest of that year.  With that in mind, I was certain to include various things in my day. There were some other things that happened that I didn't so much plan, but feel very good about anyway.

First of all, I did positive things to take care of myself. I exercised, brushed my teeth and hair, bathed, and ate fresh fruit.  I sorted my meds and made sure to take them. These are all activities that I feel are vital to my life during the coming year. I want to stay as healthy as possible, physically and mentally. All of the above actions lead to better health and wellness. If I do no more than these things where my health is concerned, I will be at least walking in the right direction.

If Christmas taught me anything, it was that my social skills need to be rekindled. To this end, I tried my best to make some meager connections with people on Facebook. I sent a couple of messages. I commented on some things. I wished everyone who was having a birthday a happy one. I liked some things and even made plans with a friend.  Of course, none of these things are large steps towards more social interaction, but they were, at the very least, active ones. I participated a small bit. It's something.

I also spent time talking to my friends. Not all of them, but at least some of them. The thing is though, I'm socially FINE with small tiny groups of people. It's just when you start adding and adding that I begin to emotionally freak out. I handled the six other people at my dad's house just fine. Any more people than that, however, and my brain starts to skip sideways.

As luck would have it, this was the day we take the trash out. On a symbolic level, I was happy with this. I love the idea of spending the year in actions that result in me removing things I don't need. Purging is a beautiful thing.

My roommate also solved a small  mystery that had been going on. We kept finding these stray bits of gray plastic in the driveway. The van has a lot of gray plastic on it, so we thought it was from it, though we could never find anything that seemed broken. It's been puzzling us for a couple of weeks. We were starting to worry if maybe the plastic was something off the house. This could have been bad.

Anyway, as I was walking my trash out, my roommate was outside already. He'd taken his part of the trash to the curb and was busy pulling dead bits from one of the plants.

"Hey," he said. "Look at the broom. Do you notice anything missing?"

I looked at the broom. I noticed that the little cap that covers the part where the bristles join the handle was gone. "Yes," I said, "it's missing the......thingymajigger." As always, my Masters in Communications was being put to excellent use.

"And what is that made out of?"

"Um......metal?" Because of course, we could afford a broom with metal thingymajiggers.

"Nope," he said. "It was made from plastic. Gray plastic."  And of course, this broom takes the brunt of our outside abuse. It  brushes snow off of the van. It's used to prop up the top of the van when it won't stay open. There are probably tons of ways the thingymajigger could have fallen off of it and hit the driveway to become broken bits of mystery plastic.

Besides the unexpected solving of mysteries, today also happened to be the day I finished a hat. I'm hopeful about this because if I am finishing projects on the first day of the year, maybe I can keep finishing them throughout the year. That would be such a pleasant change of pace for me.

All in all, it was a great first day of the year. I accomplished the stuff I wanted to accomplish. I got to have some nice added stuff along with that. I finished a project, and we solved a mystery. If the rest of the year goes like this, it could be really fun.