All that glitters

Happy New Year, everyone!

Every year, I try my best not to build New Year’s Eve into the emotional ordeal it so often turns out to be for me. I tell myself it’s a beginning as well as an end, and that regardless of what the date is on the calendar, life will be exactly the same as it ever was on the other side of midnight. Which is inidsputably true, if a little less dramatic than is my usual way.

Despite all of this, though, I always find it a melancholy time of year. I just don’t do well with endings, and while most people seem to view the New Year as a blank slate, I see it more as a sleeping dragon, just waiting for someone to come along and poke it with a stick. We just don’t know whether it’ll turn out to be a friendly dragon (Er, like some dragons totally are, obviously…) or whether it’ll up and destroy the village, and honestly? I’m scared of dragons anyway. You should be too. I mean, I know it’s super-negative and all that, but some years are just bad ‘uns, aren’t they? And as the clock strikes midnight, I always find myself worrying that this will be one of them. That, and that people I don’t know will come over and expect me to kiss them. I’m not good with that either. I’m just a whole barrel of laughs today, aren’t I? Happy New Year, everyone! Please don’t unsubscribe!

Anyway, with that bit of teenage-like angst out of the way, what I WAS going to say in that first paragraph, before I got derailed by talk of dragons and suchlike, was that every year I try my best to NOT BE LIKE THAT, and instead to view the New Year as a whole bunch of opportunities waiting to be discovered, and… I’d add some other pithy, optimistic stuff here, but I’m sure you’ll all have had your fill of inspirational “New Year, New You!” sayings on Facebook, so I’ll just leave it at that. I’ve only ever managed to pull this off a handful of times, but you’ll be relieved to hear that this year was one of them, and that I’ve worked out what the key to a non-depressing New Year’s Eve is: it’s basically distraction. Surround yourself with lots of people, and lots of noise, and before you know it, you’ll have sailed through midnight, and be living in the future, without even realising what happened.

With this in mind, Terry and I spent New Year’s Eve in exactly the same place we spent it last year: with both of our families, at a local bar/restaurant which throws a big party, complete with food, drinks and the waiters dancing on the tables. It’s a pretty good way to do it, because we get to celebrate with all of the people we love most (or a lot of them, anyway – not everyone was able to be there, but there was still enough of our favourite folks to make it a lot of fun), and I only had to kiss one complete stranger, so that was a relief, too. Oh, and I also chose to celebrate by dressing like a glitter-ball for the occasional. Well, I figured if you can’t wear something sparkly on New Year’s Eve, you basically never can, can you?

And that was our New Year’s Eve. I have no idea what kind of dragon 2013 will turn out to be, but I sincerely hope it’s the fluffy, cuddly kind, and that you all have an absolutely wonderful year!

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