I sat here reflecting on the year just passed and realizing how much went on that I never bargained for. I went from no job to small job to big job to great job, from heartbreak to heart felt, from a single voice to thousands, from no connection to anything to a connection with so many. This was the year I decided I didn’t care what anyone thought about me anymore. I decided to go ahead and take the plunge with everything that has gone on in my life, to suck the marrow out of it and keep pushing forwards. There has been no single best part of this leg of the journey — it has all been good, even the bad.

I began to recognize who my true friends were, the people who were really there for me when the times got roughest. I began to see more clearly that just because people around me were talking about something didn’t make it cool. I began to find this voice that I never knew existed in me through issues I had tried to sweep under the rug.

I have started to appreciate my family more, disjointed and dysfunctional as we are. I have started counting blessings and being grateful instead of having demands and expectations and copping a shit attitude when I don’t get my way. I have started to see the promise in things that once seemed bleak and distant.

For the first time this year, I can suggest candidly that I have earned the respect of people in my peer group for doing nothing more than being willing to open up and talk about things that I used to only talk to my friends about. I’ve been invited to talk about things in front of dozens of people. I’ve been inundated with emails and phone calls, people wondering what I have to offer them instead of my having to ask what they can offer me. I’ve been blessed with the ability to translate ideas into realities, to take apart pieces of the world and put them back together for others to see in ways I never knew I could. I’ve suddenly been granted a chance at the life I have always wanted. I have people who rely on me for my abilities and my opinions.

I’ve begun giving away what seems like more than I could keep. I have chosen acceptance over analysis on things which I could not explain. I’ve tapped into resources of mental and emotional stability that I thought I could not overcome. I have, in short, made some improvements.

But 2006, which now is not so far away, will be a year filled with new goals and acquisitions. Is it wrong to seek promise in the flipping of a calendar page? Is it so far fetched to think that the things I’d like to see improve can actually get better just because I place the value of their improvement on a number? Frankly, I don’t know.

This thing which I started thanks to the encouragement of my friend and comrade Rachel has turned into something much bigger than I could have ever imagined it to be. This was just supposed to be some place that I threw my casual ideas, that I stripped down what was happening around me to its barest essence. This blog is my safe place. It’s where I can talk to you and you can talk back to me without fear of what it looks like to the outside world.

I learned a very valuable lesson from someone half my age this year about how the power of a single voice could affect a change farther and wider than my mind can comprehend. Did I ever think that would happen here? Absolutely not. Did I ever think anything would change as a result? I don’t know and I still don’t. Regardless of what happens from here forward, I always have this moment in time to look at and see where a single piece of information dispersed in a single place can warrant outrage and stir the echoes of a vocal minority to seek justice.

I’m not out to recapture that moment again. If any change occurs, as it should, then it is only because it was supposed to happen anyways.

No matter where I am from, there is nothing so profound as finding my own heart in the place where I am. Like most aging hipsters, I have tended to follow my own credo and shape my own rules. I have squandered more than I have held onto, and I have fond memories of it all. In my disconnected state from all that has come to pass, I have been able to walk a course of freedom that words don’t really explain.

Someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up this year. I thought about it for a minute and then I answered, confidently, “I want to be in a position to never have to answer that question again.”

That’s what I want for all of you, too. I want you to have a new year that is filled with questions that don’t really require an answer. I hope for you to have a new year undaunted by resolutions.

• I hope you meet every deadline, that you find the world asking your opinions on things, too.
• I hope you reinvent the wheel.
• I hope that you can travel.
• I hope that you can enjoy time with the people you love, that you’ll get to see that game in person instead of having to watch it on TV.
• I hope you eat well and sleep well and dream big.
• I hope you don’t drink too much and pass out on the table.
• I hope you have a fire to warm you on cold nights and an air conditioner to keep you cool when its too hot outside to move.
• I hope your car runs, that you get to climb a mountain or run a marathon.
• I hope you pay off all your bills and become debt free.
• I hope your health stays strong and that you get to see some light in your children’s eyes.
• I hope you stop watching television and start doing.
• I hope your children come home safe and unharmed from the war.
• I hope that your cookies don’t burn, that your refrigerator is running and you don’t have to catch it.
• I hope you can find comfort in quiet and that you will listen for the beauty in ordinary things.
• I hope you don’t lose hope, and I hope you’ll be encouraged not to quit when things seem their toughest.
• I hope your heart is as big as the words we use to describe it.
• I hope you’ll learn a bit more tolerance when it comes to the things that you don’t understand.
• I hope you will seek forgiveness from those whom you have harmed, and that the people who have harmed you will ask for forgiveness in return.
• I hope you will only promise what you can deliver, and you will never back down from a challenge.
• I hope you will look for the good in those things which trouble you the most, and that you will do something that will change someones life for the better.
• I hope you will stop yelling at your parents.
• I hope you will win the lottery.
• I hope you will hear the song that will change your life forever.
• I hope you will find true love that is deeper than any ocean, realer than any sense can interpret.
• I hope your babies are born healthy, I hope you make more money, I hope you will encourage your significant other to take that yoga class.
• I hope you will find something that resembles enlightenment, and that you find a way to spread that enlightenment around through your own example.

I hope for all of these things for you next year. And if for some reason any of it doesn’t happen, it won’t be because I didn’t wish it for you.

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