For obvious reasons, I prefer to wait until after the elections before even thinking about the coming year. Nobody can think rationally during the hysteria of the campaigns. But now, rather reluctantly, I have purchased an appointment book for 2027. I don't know why I keep on doing this. When you get to a certain age, it becomes ridiculous to make long-term plans. Simply buying an appointment book made from paper marks me as hopelessly out of date, a living memorial to Johannes Gutenberg. Most people these days prefer to entrust their futures to small plastic gadgets, made in China, which will keep all their plans and notes and pictures safe unless and until the thing stops working, or the batteries run out, and their futures and their selfies vanish in a puff of electronic smoke.
Superstitious people might say that buying a 2027 appointment book, or even a simple wall calendar, is tempting providence, especially at this historical moment, when no fewer than five end-of-the-world scenarios are being confidently predicted for the near future: the artificial intelligence disaster, the economic crash, the environmental catastrophe, a new pandemic and, of course, nuclear Armageddon. The Biblical End of Times has been postponed until 2028, which is just as well. With all those apocalyptic events on the horizon, it scarcely seems worth making an appointment to see the dentist.
Nevertheless, I have my appointment book, a monument to my naïve optimism. Actually, I don’t even know whether “Appointment Book” is the right name for these things. Some call themselves Agenda Books, or Planners, but I don’t have an agenda, or a plan. They come in an extravagant variety of shapes, sizes, and formats. Some are terminally sentimental, with cute titles like Life, Love and Dreams. Others have aggressive, macho names like “Action Planner – no dreaming there. The one I chose is a plain, almost austere week-by-week appointment book, described (no doubt ironically) by its manufacturers as a “Self Management System.” That makes me smile every time I look at it, as if “self-management” was an achievable goal in this or any other year. This book also invites me to enter a list of important dates, although I don't know how I'm supposed to know which dates will be important before they happen. Perhaps the disasters I just mentioned would count as important, but none of them come with a definite date that I could write down.
These books are not like diaries, because they aim to record the future, not the past. They are the story of your life before it happens, and the future is always more interesting than the present. So, a new appointment book is a terrible temptation. Like Pandora’s Box in reverse, it starts out empty and harmless but, as time goes by, it becomes full and intimidating and threatens to take over your life. It’s happening to me already. The decisions of 2027 are upon me, long before I’m ready to think seriously about them, or even believe in them. But the pages of my new book are enticingly blank, and 2027 is still weeks away, so why not fill up some of those empty days? It’s easy to jot down a few events and commitments – a dinner, a talk, a promised visit. They don’t seem real now, but they will!
That’s the way the years slip away – with one undisciplined decision after another. Twelve months from now, if spared, I’ll be busy measuring out the days of my life for 2028.
