With the end of each year, we look to the coming 12 months with hope that they will be better than the last 12. No matter how things have gone in the past year, it is human nature to want them to go better in the coming one.

We do need certain things to happen to give us a sense of continuity, like Lindsey Lohan going to jail again or some politician getting caught in a sex scandal, but we generally like to think the coming year will be different and better.

We do have some advantages in 2013 that should at least give us a chance to step off in the right direction.

The coming year is not an election year so we will not be assaulted with the verbal barrage of campaign speeches. Unfortunately, we will have to listen to repeated denials by everybody and their brother that they are not running for president, until they finally announced that everything they had previously said was misinterpreted — which is their word for a lie — and they actually will be running. 

If our luck holds we should have until about October before the first candidate comes out of the woodwork and announces a run for the White House. 

We will not have to worry about predictions of the world coming to an end come December 2013.

The fact the world did not end with the termination of the Mayan calendar did likely cause consternation on the part of some. I have not made a car payment or raked the leaves this month, just in case. Now the leaves and pine straw are covering the yard like beer cans at a stock car race and the check’s in the mail.

But since we have the number 13 in the coming year, no doubt we will have our share of soothsayers with someone predicating the world will end on the afternoon of July 27th.

Why? Who knows, but you never turn down a reason to party on a hot summer night.

We will not have to worry about going over the Fiscal Cliff in 2013. As of this writing, the issue is still in doubt and the Village Idiots Convention in Washington in charge of handling this particular problem will have either done, nothing and we are already over the cliff or done something and we won’t get there.

The downside is, no matter what is or is not done we will have to hear about it being a disaster from one side or the other until something else comes along for them to talk about, like someone announcing a run for president in October.

Unfortunately, the new year will bring us a new edition of the General Assembly, which will almost certainly give us a fleeting moment when we watch what they do and think the soothsayers were right about impending disaster.

No doubt 2013 will bring us yet again another new must-have electronic device designed to make our lives even more efficient. No doubt it will also make our lives even more cluttered and connected to the unimportant. Until they come up with a belt that lets me fly over traffic congestion, I’m not interested.

While the reality of our world may not be to our liking, the arrival of the new year gives us a moment to pause and reflect upon where we have been and where we are going.

A new year brings no guarantees, no epiphany that the world will suddenly spin peacefully in its greased grove.

All we can do is hope and pray that maybe, just maybe, this year will be a little better than the last one.

Happy New Year.

Ric Latarski is a freelance writer who writes on a variety of topics and can be reached at Rlatarski@aol.com.