December, January

Do you have and end-of-the-year song? Maybe you can borrow one from this list. For me, Christmas and New Year's blend together, so I'm going to stretch it a little and borrow the symbolism of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" and give a musical representation of what I want this period to feel like.

We're gonna go with the Ghost of Christmas Past first, with The Beatles and Johannes Brahms. One last look over our shoulder to say goodbye with a smile before facing future.

Secondly, we have the Ghost of Christmas Present. The present is now, and what we need now is hope, although not the foolish kind, but one that incorporates the lessons learned at less than ideal times. There you go, LP's "Suspicion" and Gloria Stefan "Abriendo Puertas".

And finally, the Ghost of Yet to Be. This section I leave open. I want to think of myself as free, if not from the circumstances of life, at least from the clutch of Fate, which I try to see as something that can only be traced back from the end of the journey, as opposed to something that's laid down before us from the start. So: an empty page, a clean slate, all those stereotypes. I wish you all a brilliant 2018. Let's give it a run for it's money.