Three Minutes to Midnight

I just read that over 3000 lbs of confetti will fall on Times Square tonight and thought, pfft...I can beat that. I will too. I will celebrate quietly with my beautiful wife and sleeping daughter, a loudly purring cat and a hat I enjoy a great deal resting on my head. I will harm no one, including myself. I will be full with sincerity and hope that 2010 is a better year than 2009 was, and I will fall asleep on a cold winter night beside a giant body of water and rather smooth, warm and lithe human one, and when I wake up it will be a new year of possibilities.

I sent off a few New Years wishes...didn't call a soul, save my parents, because no one called me (part of my New Years resolutions -- Who cares about the people that don't care), and I will slip gently and without argument or fuss into 2010. It feels good. Would I like the company of others? Sure, perhaps on some other night, some other year, but tonight feels just fine. I think I've reached a point where I want to spend time with the people who want to spend time with me and that might be the most grown up thing I've stumbled into yet in this rapidly changing world of mine.

I think I want to spend 2010 in the company of beautiful people. I don't necessarily mean physically so, but in spirit and perspective...people who make you smile almost all of the time. No more making excuses for people, no more opening myself up for disappointment, no more philosophical pre-occupations, no more looking past the easily mended faults of those I let close to me. I'd make a list of resolutions but they'd be vague, at best, to most of you and matter very little to almost all of you. I will, however, venture to discuss what I'll expect from others, and in 2010 the leash will get shorter, there will be a great many more brushback pitches thrown, and no longer will I wait for another thing from another person. I will nurture those relationships that ask nothing of me but offer so much, and I will tell the people in my life what they should hear. I think I'll start with letters...actual paper and pen with stamps letters. As the new year begins I'll test fate and ask for addresses and those who send them will find letters in their mailboxes. I miss the venture and I like the notion of being perhaps the one person left in your orbit who might take the time to write a letter. I heard a story about Ernie Harwell and how he is such a classy guy that he still sends correspondence and thank you's etc...it's something of a different generation and I think I want to be a part of that. That's something I wouldn't mind coming up in conversation someday when I'm long gone. "Do you know that he sent letters...actual real letters...You know, the kind that you can keep in a shoebox. I once got a thank you note from him just for saying a kind word about his family." I think I'd like that. I think I'd like that a lot.

Happy New Year people. I think it's gonna be a good one.