The Fireworks Outside

In order to keep getting more of what you already have, keep doing what you are doing. If you want something different, you must do something different.
 – Lucy MacDonald

Each year I ring in the New Year ultimately the same old way.  The faces may change but I always end up watching the ball drop in Times Square.  On TV.  Same as many, many people across America.  There is nothing wrong with this and I have long enjoyed it.

The countdown usually gets me - the cheering that follows seems as though something grand has been accomplished.  In many ways, it has.  I mean, we've lived this long - long enough to see another year come and go.  That is exciting stuff. 
Each time the drill goes on and the ball slides down, wobbling ever so slightly and slowly, there is something unspoken about it.  At least for me.  My guess is for a great many other people as well.  It's the hope and promise of what we would like to believe the coming-up-on-you-quick year is going to bring.  It has long been the hope that this new year will finally be "my year".  The year when everything gets better and life finally starts happening on a larger scale.  That somehow these next twelve months are the beginning of something new, something fun, something exciting and most of all - something very real.  Something to write home about, something that will be there to reflect on, smile about and simply enjoy when the angels come to whisk you away at the old age of 88, lying on your bed at home saying goodbye to a life well lived.

This will be the year it all begins.

And each year - inevitably - this is not the way of it.  Life continues on at it's regular pace.  I continue to work a job that drowns out the life in me, I continue to walk the same path I've been walking and I continue to battle the same issues I have been battling for a long time.  Sort of.  Things do continue to evolve, even if I can't see it at the outset but only in hindsight.

Meanwhile - I continue each year, time and time again - probably 31 years of it, to watch the ball drop and to celebrate the seemingly magical promise that the change of the calender brings.  This year - however - I did it a different way.  I sat on my couching trying to read but really - I was texting with a good friend who was home sick this fine holiday when it dawned on me.

I was on my couch because I was waiting until a couple minutes before midnight in order to watch the ball drop once again.  This would be the first year - possibly in all of my life - I would be doing it alone.  I had to be in work early this morning and was already tired from a long day at work yesterday so I was going to watch the ball drop and then crawl into bed.  I had stopped by a friend's party in order to give her the respect of showing up - if even for a little bit - and I had a few small drinks.  Not nearly enough to get me drunk or even the slightest bit tipsy.  I was sipping a glass of wine as I was texting and trying to read the same paragraphs over and over again when I made the announcement. (To my good friend, Co-Britney Fan.)

I am going to spend this year under the covers in my bed.  I wished her the best of nights and the best of upcoming years, plugged my slowly dying phone into the wall and crawled under the sheets. (After pouring out the glass of wine in the sink.)  As I sat in the hospital with Eddie Kaspbrak and his mom - listening to the argument that ensued - I glanced once or twice at the clock but was lost mostly in what was going on in that Derry Home Hospital room. 

When I heard the fireworks go off I thought they were early then realized the time had flown by.  I listened to the noise makers and the fireworks - and for a couple moments I allowed myself a pity party - then I promptly told myself to shut-up, took my book to my book bag to bring with me today, crawled back into bed and went to sleep.  I wasn't going to be hungover this New Year's Day... though I wouldn't be particularly well rested... I wouldn't be hungover.  And I would get to work on time.  Which I did.

The light of my phone receiving a few text messages lit up my room periodically as I began drifting off to sleep.  I wasn't alone in the world - I was just alone in my room.

I am not going to pin all of my hopes and dreams on 2011 as I have in the past.  I am going to pay attention to my current goals and I am going to try to remain focused, which is something I have hardly done before.  I decided, in that quick moment of getting off the couch and getting into bed, of pouring out the glass of wine and choosing to do this sober that I was going to do something different - and who knows - maybe this will actually have a lasting effect.  Or at least it will be some small part of the changes puzzle that my life so desperately wants.