Resolution

Happy New Year...or not. It remains to be seen how happy this new year will be.

I for one am hopeful.

As the new year gets underway we take (if only for a second) notice of the things other people have decided to change about themselves, the things they hope to accomplish within the next 365 days, the ways they want to make their own little worlds a little bit better.

As I sat at dinner tonight I was reminded that I hadn't actually made any resolutions by the fact that others were talking about theirs.

Some want to curb their vices, from drinking, to gambling, to the occasional drug use.

Nick and Sean want to lose some weight.

Porterhouse's resolution seems to involve sitting in a bar for twelve consecutive hours drinking whiskey, eating chicken wings, and continuing to be his normal obnoxious self.

My seven year old brother's ambitious resolution is to become a superhero, and to that end he insists that his new name be "Super Naked Lad".

The best of luck to all of them.

My resolution is a little different. In fact I doubt it is really a resolution at all.

It's more of a dream.

I hope, with all my heart, that 2005 can even hold a candle to the greatness that was 2004.

The way we judge time is an awfully arbitrary thing, and as I frequently prove the definition of a "year" is both bendable and breakable. Did the year start with the September of my last year of college? Because then it's been over for several months. Did it start with the beginning of my blogging habit? That means it's been over since December 14th. Could it start with my night of drunken debauchery? Because then I have till May. Can it please start with the last time I saw them? And then start over and over every time I see them again? Because then with any luck, this year will never end.

But no matter how much I hold on, no matter how much I wish it to be so. This year is over. And we won't ever get it back. But now we have next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, on and on till we meet our end and then we won't much worry about how many years have come and gone but only about what comes next.

2004 was great because I never knew what was coming next no matter how much I thought I did.

I made people laugh in 2004, made people cry, made people think. I wrote, I did, I lived. I traveled to New Orleans and listened to a beautiful woman sing all night long, I sat in the Olive Branch and swapped stories with new friends and old. I threw a barbecue that people will remember for a long time to come. I wrote thousands of pages and millions of words all for reasons I have yet to understand. I told people how I felt, even when it was awkward, or embarassing, or just plain unpleasant. And I like to think they respected me for it. I said things I'd never said before, went to places I'd never been, and did things I'd never done.

I got completely hammered for the first time in my life, graduated college, watched one of my best friends get married, went to a handful of graduation parties, buried my last grandfather, and started my job in the real world...all in a period of ten days.

I had my moments...yes I did. I had my moments.

And as 2004 fades away, and 2005 steps up to take it's place I'd just like to say...

To all of you I know and love, and to the strangers who I have yet to have the pleasure of knowing, Good Luck, God Bless, and Happy New Year.