Oh God, Another New Year?

I came up with a High School yearbook

slogan for the coming new year.

“2020: Coming into Focus”

You know, like 20/20 vision.

Coming into visual clarity.

Seeing with clearness.

Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be plastered all over

yearbooks across the Country because

frankly, it’s not that great of a slogan.

I’m not sure how apt the slogan will

be for those of us long removed from

the High School days.

I initially applauded my own cleverness

at the development of this slogan, but as

time went by I recognized its ultimate cheesiness.

It is not exactly how I want to enter this New Year,

this new decade actually. Although the impetus was

pure and authentic, as I do hope things come into focus for me.

It’s just not all that good as sayings go.

And who am I to make up a new saying?

Do I carry enough weight to make up such a thing?

I imagine it on tee-shirts, perhaps with a

a bespectacled illustrated character with its fist in the air

in defiance of the prior blurry years of the past.  

Standing atop some giant 2020, fireworks going off

all around the background. Across the chests of some

young people excited about their potential.

Or maybe the character sitting in a laser surgery chair

giving a thumbs up as his beady eyes are made new through

science.  I don’t really know, there’s a lot of directions.

It is, however, just a weird phrase I came up with at

my employer’s Christmas party after hearing the boss’s

speech about what 2020 is sure to bring.

I’ve tried it out a few times on my friends,

but it hasn’t exactly been received with

the adulation I’d hoped.

I suppose that’s what makes a new year

so good then. A chance to leave the nonsense

of the past year behind and start something new.

I’d prefer I didn’t sound like a terrible TV sitcom

writer, hammering a point home about change and

the future and all that tepid, formulaic tripe.

Even the review of the cheesy slogan appears to

be cheesy. I think I’ll leave my slogan here in

2019.

I’m not sure I want to take it with me.  

I’ll put it by the door, with all of last year’s stuff

I’ve been meaning to toss.