It seems to be a law in blog land that one has to write some sort of post recognizing the end of the year. I did it last year, so now I suppose I have a streak to uphold.
With one great exception, I'm hard-pressed to think of many remarkable things that happened this year. Sure, there were both ups and downs... Jami and Chris welcomed baby Max... work caused some "pull my hair out" moments... vacations were good... people I considered good friends seemed to ditch me... cooked some awesome food... and some that apparently tasted like butterscotch.
There's been no single overarching theme to 2008 for me, and that may actually be a theme in and of itself. For lack of a better term, that fact has allowed me to recover. For some time, even through the early part of this year, I had been living a Seger song...
The years rolled slowly past
And I found myself alone
Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends
Found myself further and further from my home
I guess I lost my way
There were oh so many roads
I was living to run and running to live
Never worrying about paying or even how much I owed
Moving eight miles a minute for months at a time
Breaking all of the rules that would bend
Began to find myself searching
Searching for shelter again and again
I feel like I've regained my footing now, especially in the last few months. By itself, that fact would have made this a good year in my book, but there's something else...
I found someone who makes me feel like I've won the lottery. Remarkably, she's said the same about me. I'm *trying* to let myself believe how good it is, but I've never felt this level of reciprocity in a relationship before. It really is a whole new world - one I like a lot.
I don't know the whole path that 2009 is going to take, but there are a lot of good things in the works. I can honestly say that I've never been as hopeful for a coming new year. That hope may be the lasting legacy of 2008.
I took a heavenly ride through our silence
I knew the moment had arrived
For killing the past
And coming back to life...
