It's 2:30 p.m. on a Sunday and raining so heavily that my cat, Jiggs, refuses to go out. I've been in my home office since 9 a.m., still unshaven and dressed in plaid nighties and an old cap that's permanently marked with the sweat stain from when I did a 20-mile run. The Weather Channel is droning on in the background, and for about the 63rd time today, I'm hearing the local forecast.

Since this morning, I've paid the house bills, answered E-mail, drilled a hole in a wall to hang a plant light, put a leg of lamb in the oven for tonight's dinner, unclogged a storm drain in the backyard, managed to delete -- and then restore -- some crucial DLL files from my computer, plugged into my office computer with PCAnywhere, and finished an important proposal I'm presenting to bankers Monday afternoon -- in hopes they'll grant me a much-needed line of credit.

It's the beginning of the new year -- and a good thing, too. As 1998 moved on, things seemed to get worse: Well-known contemporaries and others died, friends and relatives were diagnosed with cancer, my son was in a bad car accident, and some pretty hefty clients had some pretty hefty outstanding balances. I also invested in another startup, which did nothing to help my cash flow as 1998 checked out.

The final blow of the year came when I dragged out the Christmas tree: All the water in the tree-stand base, which I forgot about, sloshed onto the staircase. I remembered it a few minutes later when I sat down on a step to take a stone out of my Nikes. It was a fitting end to a spirit-dampening 1998.

Of course, there's nothing magical about a new year. Nothing in the heavens occurs to realign things. But, psychologically, it affords us the aura of a clean slate. So we look ahead, vowing to not repeat some idiocies of the past -- whether we caused them or not.

I have some major plans for the new year, which I've already solemnized via high-fives with some colleagues. I'm sure I did the same last year. In fact, as I was putting away the Christmas ornaments this year, I found a note to myself scribbled on the back of an old business card. Dated Christmas 1996, it said: "You're either rolling in dough by now or you're wiped out." Actually, I'm somewhere in between. True to my masochistic nature, I love leaving notes around so that I can find them just to see how far off my predictions were.

As I plug away on the PC, cranking out business plans and financials and writing glowing cover letters about the future of my company, one thing still rings true about success: It won't happen unless we want it to, no matter what year it is.

George Giokas is the president and CEO of StaffWriters Plus, a specialty agency that places writers in temporary and permanent positions with corporate and other employers. It also provides editorial consulting work. His database includes 2,500 writers and editors specializing in more than 60 categories. His Web site is located at www.staffwriters.com, and you can E-mail him at george@staffwriters.com.