And they do don't they? You wake on New Years day and it begins. They kind of grind on day after day till before you know it you're starting down the barrel of your aunty Gloria's 3kg trifle, or picking 50c pieces out of a plum pudding. You're sitting on the couch snoozing or smelling that burnt wood smell of the BBQ in your clothes.
I've always thought those Northerners stuffed up having their festive season in the middle of winter. Sure, maybe if it's 2 degrees outside, it's been overcast or raining for weeks, you're on the verge of a cold and trying to stay warm, and your flatmate has just taken off for a week in the Aegean, a big feed and getting a bit cut is exactly what you need.
But why would you subject yourself to that, when you could just be chilling on the porch with a sweet New Zealand beer, a chicken sandwich, some soulful tones playing, the smell of a manuka fire, and the tightness of ocean water drying on your skin?
If a year's end wrap up is what's required, then here we go. Jesus 2004 was shit. As I pointed out all that time ago, 2004 was miserable, all long shifts for crap money, bullshit arguments with uncompromising flatmates, days of study, days of watching life pass me by, fun just beyond my grasp.
Thanks be to the people who told me to come home. Guys, I don't ever really think I can thank you enough. They say you don't move here for the weather, and they're right, though on days like today, you know there is nothing better than a good day in Wellington. So to those two members of the original Le Club Politique, here's to you and your good advice, had I not listened to you who knows what kind of miserable life I might have ended up in. I will (as I have may have said through several drunken hazes) be long in your debt.
And that's the thing about 2005 for me, the culmination of moments. 2005 was very much a culmination year, one that began when I saw my life fading and slipping into boredom and oblivion, but saved it by listening to the call of a small city in a far corner of the world.
There are plenty of times where we chose to ignore the plaintive-sounding whispers of our many futures, but they whisper to us all the same. They fall on deaf ears or are swept away by facades of momentary joy. They slip between the cracks of our day to day life or are swept away by gentle breezes while we leave them out to cool. We put them out with the cat while we sleep, or we leave them on a shelf where they're smothered by bills and commitments.
So let's hear it for listening and making the right choices. Let's hear it for knowing when to walk away from bad situations. Let's hear it for knowing when to step into good ones, like full-time employment. Let's hear it for not being afraid to step out of comfort zones into even better places.
Hell, while I'm at it, let's hear it for those new-found lovers out there, good things happen to good people. Let's hear it for those couples still sticking it out years later. After seeing a 60th Anniversary last weekend, I know what kind of stress you can put on relationships and still have then survive. Let's give it up for new-found friends, even if some of you are arrogant bastards who need a reality check. Let's hear it for low-stress flatting situations, and low-stress work environments. Both of which I very much deserve. Let's cheer for rapidly shrinking debts. Let's hear it for all-too-rapidly expanding waistlines. Let's hear it for rediscovering family after being all too long away from home. And let's raise a glass to hangovers, every last goddamn one of them.
All in all, not such a bad year.