obligatory new year post

yes, yes, i and millions of others have returned to our long-neglected blogs to start anew. we, humans, are creatures who love a good re-start, doncha think?

my last post was exactly 3 months ago today. i had just gotten my apartment and was trying to fit an entire household into a pocket-sized packet of a place. i did it. the dogs and i are cozy in our little home. sure, there's overflow, but people with lots more room than i have storage places, too. i feel fine about it.

i've spent the last week in a self-imposed hermit-y existence. it's been good. year-end at work is ridiculously crazy and, through it, i've been wrestling with a miserable nagging cold, insomnia and general dissatisfaction with certain things about my life. the last page of that calendar can bring a load of self-reflection down on a person.

i start the year STILL married. it's almost a joke at this point. i texted my lawyer when jon & kate were finalized and said, in a nutshell, "really?!?!?" the arc of life is such that my near-ex-husband and i have been on great terms lately. i spoke with him earlier and asked for his girlfriend's phone number so i could be sure she'd be the first to know when he's free to marry again. his two-word reply was not "merry christmas". hehehe

today, mom and i saw "up in the air". aside from our admiration of george clooney's ummm, countenance, i loved all the ambiguities of the story. nothing was really wrapped up at the end. like life. i'm thinking a lot about what the main character said to his future brother-in-law. how he asked him the circumstances of some of his best moments; was he alone? or was someody else there?

i realize my best moments have been, in large part, with others. there was the time i got stuck overnight in the airport in paris. i had to sleep on the floor, surrounded by 8 weeks of luggage. a late-night tap on the shoulder was a young french kiosk worker bringing me an apple and a sandwich in case i got hungry in the night. then there was the guy from montreal whom i'd met on a ferry trip to remote islands off the north of scotland. we got stranded in the midnight sun and had to sleep in the half-light in someone's yard. my courage grew tenfold that night, though i didn't know it at the time. i also learned red and black are hard to distinguish from one another as i played solitaire in the perpetual dusk. there was the lassie-like tour a border collie provided on the isle of eriskay. i have a series of photos of that dog waiting for me to catch up as he led me to another section of the island. it was magic. it was a story, as many of them are, that i could never have written.

though i have had many 'best moments' with people i love - standing next to my cousin on her wedding day, or my sister and i calling out to mom and dad under the bedroom door on christmas morning to see if santa had come (i was in my 30s, she in her 20s) - i realize so, so many are with people or in circumstances that are, at the core, just moments. with strangers. these are things that will affect me for as long as i have the capacity to remember. i wonder, then, who i may have affected in passing. i hope it was in a good way.

for the new year, i resolve to recognize that the littlest moments can have the longest, most far-reaching impact. i will live my life in this awareness. i've been told i have great insight. i will learn to apply it to myself. i will remember that great risks are the way to great rewards, however, i will first breathe, then choose wisely - in all things.

i hope 2010 is a breakthrough year for all of us. i'm cheering YOU on.