Welcome, 2012.

Happy New Year, everyone!  I know, I'm a little late.  My internet was down for a few days so please forgive the tardiness of my sentiments.

I hope you all had a fun New Year's Eve, wherever you were.  I always view NYE as an excuse to wear as much glitter and sparkly stuff as I can possibly fit onto my person.  A night to let loose and guide the old year out the door with enough fanfare that you won't remember it all when the next year begins.  A night where the mayor of a major city can begin peace talks with the queen of our new alien overlords.  

Bloomberg later stated that the denizens of Planet Gaga presented him with
a tome entitled "To Serve Man," leaving him optimistic about future relations.

This time of year is always so heavily steeped in weird sentiments.  Every media outlet in the world produces a billion "best of the year" lists in every possible category.  (Personally I like this list of 2011's 25 best cover songs.)  Everyone you meet asks you what New Year's resolution you'll be feeling guilty about breaking by Valentine's Day.  We all get misty-eyed for what was and starry-eyed for what may come, caught up in the magic of passing time.

And I don't really mind that.  The yearly lists have gotten a little out of hand, sure, but it's fun to relive the stuff you've forgotten about the year that was.  And though I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, the symbolic new beginning of a shiny new calendar year does lend itself well to psychologically pumping yourself up for making changes.

I've got some big changes ahead of me.  Right now I'm in the darkness before what I hope will be a bright dawn.  Am I making any resolutions?  No.  But I've got some changes in mind that I need to make and am hoping to get into action this year.  Back in my baton twirling days we had a category called Parade Corps. The main rule of a Parade Corps team was maintain constant forward motion at all times.

That's my rule for 2012:  maintain constant forward motion.

Easier said than done, for sure.  But most things worth doing are. 

Every New Year's Eve I listen to the same song.  It's a maudlin choice, but I feel like it's fitting for a time when everyone is thinking about change right smack in the middle of the time of year when (where I live anyway) everything is frozen and gray.



That song is sort of especially prescient for me this year.  It's been a rough year and I'm doing my best to keep looking forward.  Maybe this year will be better than the last. 

And who knows?  Maybe at the end of this year we'll be caught up in a John Cusack/Roland Emmerich nightmare of tsunamis and earthquakes and none of the crap we got wrong will matter.  Maybe on December 22 the black oil will finally consume us all and we'll live out the rest of our days as slaves to an alien race.  And even if those things don't happen, I think this is a good year to start realizing that there may not be a tomorrow to fix your regrets and trying to create less of them instead.  I see a lot of missteps in my future, but I'm hoping they'll at least be fun and educational.




(And just in case that colonization thing does happen, I'd be fine with that as long as they make me their queen.  I'd be a kick ass alien queen.)