2010 Reboot

After that last whiny pity party of a post, I didn’t even want to look at this eff­ing blog any­more.  (My hand still hurts, by the way, but it’s no longer pur­ple or ginor­mous.) I decided to just wait until things felt right again, because I felt like it has been a plat­form for so much mis­ery that it is painful even for ME to come out here.  I know that peo­ple might be wor­ried about me, writ­ing a post like that and drop­ping off.  I was so down in Decem­ber.   The hol­i­days were bru­tal.  So, Dear Read­ers, I fig­ure it’s time to update you, and let you know that for the first time in a good while, I’m truly feel­ing great.  I’m not just smil­ing in the mir­ror and wait­ing for the mood to match it, then see­ing my own face and start­ing to cry.  I’m actu­ally for­get­ting about the damn mir­ror and liv­ing my own life again, and when I catch a glimpse of myself, it tends to be smirk­ing or mis­chevi­ous or in thought.  That’s more hon­est than just a smile any­way, at least for me.

Right now I’m focused on a job search and get­ting some things in order, so it’s going to be spotty, but I feel so much more like ME and I want to express some of that again.  So, here I am.  Time for another reboot.  I know many peo­ple hate New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions and the like, but it’s a nat­ural time to reeval­u­ate for me.  My birth­day, my wed­ding anniver­sary, and the New Year all come within three weeks of each other. It’s a time of look­ing over the past year, see­ing what has hap­pened, and how to con­tinue that path if it’s work­ing, or to change it, if it’s not.  I didn’t really con­sciously decide to change my atti­tude, though I’ve been try­ing to work on it steadily, but a switch seemed to flip for me on the last day of the year.  The emo­tional sig­nif­i­cance on mak­ing it through the year strength­ened me, and all the whin­ing and mis­ery kind of dropped off.  Yeah, since then I’ve had bad moments, but mostly I’ve felt con­fi­dent and opti­mistic again.

I wanted to start 2010 off with a bang, and I really man­aged to do most of what I wanted.  No fire­works, but there was a gor­geous round full moon the night of New Year’s Eve. It was a blue moon and an eclipse was vis­i­ble on the other side of the world, to boot.  My year would be start­ing with beauty.

On New Year’s Day, we had the tra­di­tional col­lards, black eyed peas, and I even added cab­bage in this year for good mea­sure. I wore a pretty new sweater, to show I wanted more of the same.  I didn’t do any clean­ing at all — so as not to sweep the good luck out, and also not to spend the rest of the year clean­ing up messes.  I had friends over, and we had a good time. The luck and money gods have not been slighted this year.  Hope­fully they will reward me with heaps of green stuff and luck in my endeavors.

I think there really is some­thing to start­ing the year off like that.   While the charms and tokens might not in and of them­selves bring the good luck, the atti­tude will, I truly believe.  If I start out think­ing, “2010 is going to suck as hard as 2009 did” — a Face­Book sta­tus I’d already read twice by noon Jan­u­ary first — then the prophecy might be self-fulfilled.  Yes, I know that the arena of uncon­trol­lables is out there, wait­ing to zap me.  I’m all too aware.  But I’ve sus­tained a good half a month of really good days.  I expect more to come.