Out with the old and in with the new. Keep on keepin’ on. What’s done is done. Keep your eyes on the prize.

The list of clichés urging us to always look forward is endless. True, it’s good to be optimistic; but in a new year, what do we really have to look forward to? With 2012 now on the record books and 2013 just beginning (and still no jet packs, mind you), there’s a chance that legislatures – primarily federal legislators – can break away from the “do nothingness” that plagued 2012. The question is, will they? What challenges at the of the last year will finally be resolved this year at the national, state and local levels (that is, if any are resolved at all)? Mainly, what promise do taxpayers have that things in 2013 will be any different as we enter another year of unknowns?

So far, 2013 seems to have picked up where 2012 left off, with political partisanship in Washington driving a wedge even further between Democrats and Republicans. Heated debates over gun regulations – or lack thereof – have people up in arms (figuratively and literally, as seen in the spike of gun sales); and this week, the fiscal cliff debacle was met with only a temporary solution that ensures tougher debates are right around the corner, when lawmakers once again address the national debt ceiling.

It’s a growing list of issues, some of which have been tabled for years, that was left in limbo for a new Congress. And who’s to say 2013 will be any better?

Hitting closer to home, the Farm Bill that so many local farmers hoped might pass by the end of the year was finally extended as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations. Good news as it means milk prices won’t skyrocket; bad news as it also puts farmers who spent the year promoting a new bill back to square one. Advocates now have to address a new Congress to pass a new Farm Bill by September. Essentially, they’re in the same position they were at this time last year.