2013 has gone, 2014 has begun ...

 2013 went out in a blaze of festivities.  The "end" of the year is a completely artificial social construct, but everyone loves a "festive season", so we have one.  In South Africa it is enhanced by summer and the lazy feeling that engenders.  Everything stop, and it begins to feel as if the world has paused in its circumnavigation of the sun, even perhaps ceased momentarily to rotate about its axis.

Even for those who have to keep going to work every day, things are a bit different.  There are decorations, more people or fewer people or different people, different music, weird things for sale.

Even sorrow seems worse (or maybe better, or anyway different) when everyone else is happy, or at least partying.

But now the festivities are over ...

  

... work is beginning again.  Soon school will start again, and that really is the end of the fun.

The computer is opened at MS Word, or MS Excel, or Pastel, instead of the latest craze in games.  I'm dressed in long trousers and a shirt with a collar instead of shorts and a T-shirt.  I am shuffling through documents instead of a pack of cards.

Will anything be different in 2014?  Can anything ever be different?  Do I even want things to be different?