Make 2019 a Year of Self-Improvement. . .

A final vintage greeting card for the end of the festive season.  This time, an old New Year's card featuring a couple of gnomes in a snowy January landscape.

Happy New Year from all of us at Classic Style!  Hard to believe that it is already 2019.  As I have no doubt remarked elsewhere, it seems like we were just worrying about what all of the coffee makers and toasters might do at midnight on January 1st, 2000!  Terminator in the kitchen, or something like it.  

I recall waking up to a quiet, gray, cold, and snowy morning in Trondheim, Norway that day, somewhat amused at all of the angst and worry about Y2K that had occupied people everywhere in the months before the end of the century.  As the old Doors' tune goes, people are strange.  And it is indeed odd what we get ourselves all worked up about.

But onward into 2019 everyone!  

Let's make this year one for self-improvement.  Keep that aspiration small and modest to make achieving your aim more likely though.  It might be something like increasing your knowledge about subjects that interest you by reading one new book a month.  It might be reducing that waistline by careful diet and exercise.  Say, losing two or three pounds a month.  It might be becoming more informed about the world through reading the daily news in a traditional newspaper, magazines, or online.  Your resolution might, on the other hand, be to polish your table manners a bit.  

Improving yourself might include finally signing off of the perpetual stubble and messy hair look at 35 and making the choice to don creased dress pants, leather loafers, and a sports jacket two or three days a week even if your workplace is t-shirt casual.  Start dressing for the job you want rather than the one you have now in other words.  Double-breasted suits, neckties, and starched white shirts aren't always necessary, but looking more like a capable adult who can make things happen and get things done rather than a drifting 20-something who cannot quite make the leap from part-time college barista to grown-up life -- 'adulting' seems to be the currently popular term -- won't hurt you either, men.

Whatever form your self-improvement might take in the next twelve months, recognize what about yourself might need changing, and have the steely resolve to achieve that change.  While we may not be able to change the world around us, we can certainly change things about ourselves.  Anything is possible, but it all starts with the individual, how that person wants to shape his or her life, and the resulting choices made.

Happy New Year!

-- Heinz-Ulrich