It all began on New Year's Day

New Year's is, as far as I can tell, a Disappointment Holiday, the kind of thing where there's an immense amount of pressure to have the best night of your life (every year, which seems like faulty math to me) and a very few ways to actually have the best night of your life. So you've got to go all-or-nothing: aim very very high or very very low. There's the When Harry Met Sally Manhattan fancy party option, and there's the games-PJs-Dick-Clark option; anything in between seems like a lot of stress for, arguably, not a life-changing amount of fun.

This year, because I have clearly wandered into somebody else's life, I went with Door #1: I met Christine in Manhattan and went to a friend's friend's party. I dressed up like a grown-up, like so:



and ate sweet little hors d'oeuvres-y bits and made conversation with strangers (though we also watched Dick Clark, and Ryan Seacrest waiting for Dick Clark to keel over onscreen, which was sad). It was an aim-high New Year's, and I had a good time, and now I will always be able to say, "Remember the year we got dressed up and went to New York for New Year's Eve?"

I'm not gonna lie: I was ready to shove 2008 out the door. It was a strange year for me, a year of deepening roots and, in many ways, of refined focus, but also a year of discontent. I spent a lot of time and effort trying to rock my life forward, and trying not to lose my mind in the mean time. It worked in the end--in fact, I can barely see this year through the screen of the last few frantic months--but it was desperate and frustrating and generally not my favorite thing.

And so it was nice to wake up on January 1 and see this view from Brooke and Brian's apartment:



At this time last year, I could not have predicted being here--in New York, in Washington, disoriented but enjoying the swirl of everything. I love that I couldn't see the future, and that it's brought me somewhere unexpected--I hoped and prayed and cried out for a surprise, for some kind of rescue, for something to swoop in and pick me up and carry me away, and it happened. I love that I still can't see the future, that I'll never see it, that it'll keep receding like the horizon. I love that don't know where I'll be or what I'll be doing when we hit 2010 (2010!), but I am excited to feel my way through and find out.

Happy New Year, friends.