Sign of the Times

This exact time tomorrow night, people around the world (okay, people on the EST in the United States, more precisely) will be filling champagne glasses and preparing to toast loved ones in honor of health and happiness for the New Year. Other than a few twinges I am getting right now as I write this, this is the most anticlimactic I have ever perceived the turn of the year. I had to check myself whether I am in a depression to feel this way. No, I am rarely depressed. Am I irritable that I have no Romeo to plant my lips on? Nope, not it either. After several years of spending NYE with very wrong romantic interests, I would much rather be alone forever than go through that again. (In fact, the last year that this happened, my midnight toast was, "Here's to being alone!") I have gotten to the stage that my greatest daily wish is to be productive but at a relaxed, not frenzied pace. I am seeing past all the fanfare of tomorrow night, and I'm looking ahead to actual New Year's Day. How much laundry and paperwork can I get done uninterrupted on a day that I know no one will ask me for favors, because everywhere will be c-l-o-s-e-d? I don't want to stay up until 2:00 a.m. because of what it means for the next day. If all this sounds pathetic, then so be it, because this is what would make ME happy on my first day of 2009, not putting on a show of feigned excitement at the tock of the ticker.

Which brings me to the ultimate reason why I think that this year I will return home early after maybe dinner or a show. I don't want to mark time anymore. We measure everything in years, weeks, minutes, and seconds for athletes. What I would love to resolve for myself in 2009 is NOT to count the years anymore, not to look wistfully at the past and realize how much time has whispered away or anxiously peer into the future. I want a totally different way of measuring life, if it has to be measured. Clocks are man made, something that we have imposed on ourselves. Yes, they are needed to ensure clarity and consistency when crucial, but are they necessary all the "time"? I think that my sitting out on watching the ball drop is my feeble attempt at protesting the passing of time. All I want is to do what I love with people I love, and to leave the (watch) watchful counting eye blind.