Another new year

So another year went by, with all the stress and rush, with even more stress throughout the advent because we still have the idea that the next year will not come. I’m not talking about the end of the world idea at all. I’m talking about our projects and reports that have been sitting on our desks for months and months and we always found a way to do something more important. But in December we want to finalize everything at once. We rush like crazy through every day. We wish each and every day could be longer. And the funniest thing to me is that on the 22 or 23 December we realize that we cannot manage everything and we give up. As we accept that it is not doable to finish everything we originally wanted to finish, it doesn’t matter to us anymore. Some of our colleagues are already on vacation, only some lonesome cowboys use the quiet time to clean their desks.

Then we enjoy the Christmas season, and it passes by quickly, too. We are waiting for the New Year to come and here it is. When I look back I ask myself what I still remember. Was I part of it or was I just pushed through the craziness of our everyday life?

There are a lot of contradictions we live. We are all equipped with smart phones, laptops, iPads and other high-tech stuff. Because of those we are supposed to have more time, but the opposite happens. Why? Because we take on more work as we have more time, right? We don’t think about a little balance, we think of more projects we can work on. And of course we want to be available all the time. But there seems to be a bit of a change, too. Just before Christmas, VW, the German carmaker, made a Christmas gift to its employees. The gift: emails will no longer be forwarded to their blackberries after their work day has ended. Who would have expected that? For myself, I’ve noticed that we might not remember all the things we worked on but we remember encounters we have had. People are the ones we remember, words that were said, things that were spoken about, and their impact is not lost because another year has gone by.