Happy New Year!

NY EVE '07 (no pics this year, thank goodness!)

I never really understood the excitement of New Year’s Eve.  I guess at the crudest level it is seen as the biggest party of the year.  For most people however, New Year carries more of a symbolic starting point to begin again.  Or maybe New Year signifies that the Holiday mayhem is finally over and its time to return to some sense of normalcy. 

Last year was the first New Year’s Eve that I had to work.  I was very thankful, as I needed the money, but I remember thinking throughout the night that I couldn’t believe I was still working there. 

I finished graduate school in 2008 and briefly took a job as a writer, hated it, and quit so that I could pursue my own writing.  I needed to make money, so I took a job serving.  I remember feeling pretty crappy about it.  I have a master’s degree, I should not be a waitress.

But then something shifted.  I started to see the opportunities that could come out of working at a restaurant.  The flexible hours gave me a lot more time to write/brainstorm/figure out life/etc.  And pretty quickly I started to see that this was the best opportunity I could have gotten.

Well of course life gets in the way, and although I have all of these ambitions, they were easily pushed to the backburner because of insecurities, boys, fun, laziness, and a job that is easy and pays my bills.  So I hadn’t made any huge strides by the time New Year came upon us last year.  That along with ex-boyfriend drama not only with me, but also with some of my friends, I fear we spent the majority of our year either comforting each other about them or toasting to their departure.

The one moment that really put it all into perspective for me though was when I was at work last New Year’s Eve.  I was leaning against a wall where I could see the entire front of the dining room.  I remember thinking that if I had never come to work here, I would have never gotten to experience so many amazing people, servers and customers alike.  I looked around to the teenagers in the kitchen and realized that my life has been so much fuller since I met them and I couldn’t imagine my life without them in it. 

This year, 2010, has been a slow, but steady rise back to the top.  I actually tried multiple websites, designed by myself, different styles, different looks, different stories, different names, and I hated them all.  But for the first time in a long time, I didn’t give up and here, at the END of 2010, I have my blog going, I love it, and I am ready to roll. 

I have a plan, well, many plans and I’m actually implementing them, not just planning to implement them, and I’ve never felt better.  My most important endeavor is my journey to 30.  I need to experience the life I’ve been missing because I’ve been too afraid.   I’m not afraid any longer and I’m ready to go.  I’ve already started, and it seems that those I love are ready for their own transformations as well.  I see a lot of awesomeness starting and it seems that 2011 is going to be something pretty magical.

Epilogue 

January 1^st, 2011.  I am writing this from bed as I have still not recovered from my hangover last night.  Guess it means I had a pretty good new year! 

It didn’t start that way however.  I stood up for a friend, which meant I had an altercation with another person.  That right there brought down my chi for the night.  It also started off pretty dead, but eventually picked up.  While I was happy to be there with my friends, there were a few very important people missing and their absence made me very sad. 

I tried to remain positive.  But it was a challenge.  By the end of the evening, I was ready to leave, even if it meant spending midnight in my car alone driving home.  It was a new year, I had a new plan, and I didn’t need anything else.

The ball dropped, the music started pumping, the drinks started flowing, and before I knew it, I was dancing my butt off having the best time with my friends from work.  I couldn’t have foreseen this in the beginning of the night, but in the end, I had a fantastic New Year. And even though the elements that were missing would have probably made it even better, I can’t remember another New Year’s Eve where I had more fun, more great energy circulating, and definitely a worse hangover the next day!  Happy New Year!