A New Year

I am waking up to the third day of the new year.

It is 2009. And I have no idea where the time has gone. How have the days and months flown by so quickly? I am amazed.

I rang in the new year with twenty or more of my best friends, my family. Eating, drinking, dancing, laughing. The ball dropped, pausing an extra second at the end, and most of us experienced the best New Years of our lives.

Then we all went home.

And got together again the next morning. Over coffee and breakfast and silly board games, hanging out in our pajamas. There were a few moments when I looked around and my heart swelled. We will remember days like these for the rest of our lives.

If this is any indication of what the new year will bring, my heart is glad.

Now I am home. And the expected restlessness is setting in. 363 days now ahead of me. And I want to make them count. I want to make progress. To remember them. To grow.

So my new year's resolutions? Things I want to begin, or finish, or create, or accomplish before 2010?

I keep trying to make a list. Why is this not working? This list making thing?

I want to...

1. Cultivate and stumble upon as many full and lively moments as possible.
2. Learn to say hi.
3. Smile. a lot.
4. Have to buy smaller clothes.
5. Meet you.
6. Leave Kentucky.
7. Take the perfect picture.
8. Get a new tattoo.
9. Be more patient.
10. Learn something very interesting.
11. Make As in my classes this semester.
12. Learn not to compare myself to you.
13. Spend time with my sisters.
14. Plant a garden.
15. Run, hard and fast.
16. Get involved.
17. Renew my passport. Even if I don't get to use it.
18. Have a sleepover.
19. Get my own little downtown apartment.
20. Quit my job.
21. Get a new job.
22. Start at a university. The beginning of the end.
23. Research studying abroad.
24. Learn how to knit.
25. Be part of something big.
26. Encourage more.
27. Fix something.
28. Break something.
29. Make something.
30. Do well.

These are just a few things I can think of right now. Goals. Attainable ones.

Last year, we sat at Common Grounds with my Dad on New Years Eve.

He was the only one with a resolution.

It came true this year. And changed all of our lives.

There's power in foresight, in planning.

In letting go of all our plans to let this real thing called life take its own course.

Here's to the beauty of the unknown and all that lies ahead of us.

Happy New Year.