Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Times Gone By or Auld Lang Syne

All this time, and I never knew what "Auld Lang Syne" meant. According to one web site, it means "Times Gone By." Now I'll have to listen to the song again to see how that translation phrase fits.

Yep, it's New Years Eve, and even though I've had a pretty good year, I'm ready for the new one. I'm ready to shrug off this mental and physical fatigue I have and start over. I've noticed lately that even my posture is hunched. Definitely need a new path.

Considering I started counting down the hours until I could go back to bed the second the alarm went off this morning, I doubt my New Year's Eve will be anything special. Mark and I will have a few drinks - wine, scotch, hot wine tea, nothing too toxic - maybe watch a movie, then head to bed around 10. Late for us. Maybe we'll be woken up with fireworks at midnight by our merrymaking neighbors. Who knows?

While 2008 seemed long and challenging, it was all good. The peeps turned one in January, Mark landed a new job and moved to KC in April. I finished out the school year at my awesome teaching job in June, and the grls and I joined Mark in KC at the end of July. We bought one house and, thankfully, sold another. We made it 1/2 across the country, from PA to MO, with no troubles. We got to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with family for the first time in a few years, and we had the opportunity to get reacquainted with old friends. There is food on the table, some money in the bank. Yep, we're good.

No resolutions for 2009. I don't stick to them. My goal is to stop living my life like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I finally figured it out, and that's what I'm doing. Life is so good right now, but for some reason I have convinced myself that it will not last. That it cannot last. I started reading the local obituaries, purposely searching for people who had died under the age of 70 so I could consume myself with ideas of all the things that could happen to me or my family while being thankful that none of those things did happen. Morbid. Gruesome. Unhealthy. I don't think I realized my frame of mind until I read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. In essence, I had become Henry Lamb. Look it up.

But that way of thinking ends today. I am seriously going to try to take life on a daily basis and remind myself that I have no control over anything, really. If something good is going to happen, then it's going to happen. If something not-so-good is going to happen, then something-not-so-good is going to happen and I will have to deal with it. I can't sit around waiting for it. I'm missing out on too much.

So, let's take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne. So long 2008, and welcome 2009!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

No comments:

Post a Comment