Ringing it In

The New Year has always been a time for me. Brainwashed from a young age that it is a starting point, I have always excitedly and with great paranoia had a moment each New Years Eve where I hoped I'd make it one more year. It was far more devastating as a young teen. Huddling around the big clunky television with a bad tasting bottle of wine or maybe my horrific addiction of 7Up with vodka. The vodka that tasted like lighter fluid at $9/gallon. Not the vodka that tastes like rubbing alcohol at $25/gallon.

I would watch Dick Clark in Times Square and hope one day I'd be better than that. Usually I had thoughts of what I would accomplish that next year. Menial things really. Of course I've always been big with the things I wanted to accomplish, so there where plenty of lofty ideas of what was to come. Lofty to me. Internet's First Super Star lofty, if you know what I mean.

Then I started living my life and I still don't think there was ever a New Years Eve that I celebrated at a party. It was always a much needed quiet moment to focus. Then upon moving to the desert where there are fireworks one gets to stand outside in the cold and watch all the pretty lights. Whatever works. Whatever doesn't involve lots of people. If you're going to use the New Year as some sort of starting point, it would be insanity to want to do it by getting drunk with two million people in a crowded lot.

Last night while pondering my next year I was sleeping. The first of very few New Years Eves spent with my eyes closed. I heard the fireworks. I had thoughts. But I was comfortable enough with myself and my future to not make it a focal point. Because, quite frankly, if you're not hoping, trying and reaching for your accomplishment every day then it's probably not going to work out very well no matter which way you slice it.

This last year of 2010 was very interesting. I start the years by labeling them with an expectation. Last year it was "2010 is Zen." I suppose in a lot of ways it did turn out to be Zen. The truth of Zen is that it can be pretty nauseating at times. It's been a harrowing and change-filled Zen of a year for a lot of people. There was great shift, but it all shifted so quietly and slowly. It was a slow motion explosion.

As for the oncoming year I find it too good to label. In fact since we have graduated outside of the single digits alive, I find it almost too demeaning to label a year one way or another. It will be all sorts of good things, so fill in the blank. In the grand scheme of things however it turns out, 2011 will be 2011.