2009.

I long ago gave up on making big plans for New Year's Eve as very rarely did the fancy, expensive plans live up to expectations. Without a doubt, I have had some excellent New Year's Eve experiences, but, more often than not, the best ones were spent just hanging out with a few favourite people. One of the best to date was dinner and a movie with my long-distance boyfriend. This year was watching the World Juniors Canada vs. USA game on TSN and popping the cork on a bottle of cheap champagne (each) with our friends The Medics. The only thing that was different this New Year was that I thought about what exactly the whole event means to me...


I appreciate that a new year offers a clean slate and a fresh start but I don't believe in resolutions. I think that if we want something, we should go after it whatever the month may be. Why wait for the New Year? And why give it a title? Why not just do it because you want to or because you need to? I think we set ourselves up for failure most of the time. Certainly there are things I want to accomplish this year--the things I didn't get to last year, as well as some new ideas--but I will get to them in due course and one at a time. I could call them New Year's Resolutions. But I am not starting them just because it's a new year and I am not doing them all at once. I've learned that this inevitably leads to not accomplishing anything. Instead, I will focus and accomplish one thing at a time: focus will be my watchword this year. That is as far as it goes for now...

And thinking about the next year caused me to pause and consider the last year, too. 2008 was really hard for me. I would call it miserable, but I'm secretly a positive person and now that I have some distance and perspective...well, it was miserable at times, but it wasn't a waste. It was a hard year and I learned a lot. I am at a crossroads in my life, definitely, and I am still figuring out where I am going and, more importantly, how to get there. But I'm getting closer and this past year helped me, awful as it frequently was. It was a year for learning how to deal with roadblocks in a life that has heretofore gone more or less according to plan. Hopefully this next year will be better. I will do everything I can to make it better.

I don't do lists. At least, not the traditional "Best of" or "Worst of" lists we so frequently see at this time of year. I think they are subjective and silly and serve poorly to sum up all the stories of a year in the life of our planet. And they have such finality. Years don't just end. They ebb away, they bleed into each other, they clash, they sustain each other...They are not independent entities. It's a continuum.

But, for me, 2009 is a new chapter in a lot of ways. A blank page. So here's to writing it as best I can...