The Ghosts of New Year's Eves Past

Thursday, December 31, 2009

It seems appropriate to offer one's introspective ponderings upon the final day of the year.  The year 2009, for me, began in Scotland, but is ending back home in Austin, TX.  2009 was an exciting year, to be sure, but was not by any means an easy year, at least for me.  Kellie and I traveled the world, visiting Paris and Florence and taking in the culture of Edinburgh, but it was also a year of tremendous set backs and frustrations.  This year required me, for the first time in a long time, to completely reevaluate my career path and to find a suitable Plan B when my PhD apps fell through.  Moving back to the States in August was, of course, a joyful homecoming after a year spent abroad in Scotland, but moving back and attempting to find work during the deepest economic recession of my lifetime took some of the wind out of my sails.  Still other annoyances, such as dealing with the British government and such, have slowly but surely chipped away at my optimism and positive attitude, to the point that here, at the end of 2009, I am quite ready for this year to be over.  And that's precisely the good thing about New Year's: the previous year, the good and the bad, can be set aside.  The previous chapter can be closed and a new one begun.  That's truly a freeing feeling on this, the final day of such a long and interesting year.

On another note, I find it curious this morning to consider all the other strange and interesting places I have found myself on this day.  10 years ago, for instance, in 1999, I was in Hyde Park, in London, when three nines turned into three zeroes and the world didn't come crashing down around us.  The next day, I marched through the streets of London, trombone in hand, playing "The Yellow Rose of Texas" as Londoners sang along.  Quite surreal.  In 2004, I hosted my first New Year's Eve get together at my college house in Sherman (since razed to the ground), dubbed "Isengard," and rang in the new year with friends.  Two years ago, in 2007, New Year's Eve was the night before my long, strange trip to Indonesia, where I met monkeys and spent a night, all alone, at a stranger's house in the middle of the Balinese jungle.  Then, of course, last year Kellie and I attended the 2008 Hogmany festivities on the streets of Edinburgh.  Princes Street was packed to the gills with revelers, who joined together at midnight to sing "Auld Lang Syne," in something less than perfect unison.

Perhaps the moral of the story is that even if one finds oneself at the end of a less than banner year, there is comfort in the fact that one never knows where one will end up next.  New adventures always lie on the horizon, so long as one remains open to those adventures.  And as the year 2009 fades into a distant memory, I know all those sources of frustration will fade, as well, until I am left with only a fond reminiscence of things past as I trudge, ever forward, into 2010, and thankfully, can finally cease the annoying habit of prefacing the year number with "two-thousand-and."  Seriously.  That got old in about two-thousand-and-two.  Welcome, twenty-ten, welcome.