Welcome to 2010

The bell strikes twelve and right on cue, it starts to snow. The light flurry of snow float slowly towards the packed masses, dancing and singing in the streets. Now comes the new year, the old slate wiped clean, a new beginning, a chance to start anew....so goes the saying. I breathe in the crisp cold night air and lose myself in the celebrations and cheer. There resides within me a capacity to believe that the twists and turns of fate will reveal their true purposes in time. Indecision and regrets plague my mind but I look to the future and the new year with new eyes, with new perspectives and with an open heart. I look up at the fireworks painting the night sky in an incandescent array of gunpowder and light. I stand, chilled to the bone, as I soak up the beauty on show. The thought runs through my mind, the incessant nagging in my ear, the desire to follow through...Yet I watch the explosion of light and sound tattoo a rhythm on my only heart. These dreams can wait while my eyes are open. Every moment I'm awake, I live another life. Every second of the night ticks by, rushing headlong, caught up in the festivities. I stand back from another hug and it hits me then that I know how to be happy, to enjoy MY life. It doesn't make sense to other people but that's the beauty of it. It is mine to appreciate and up to you to understand, however tough it may be. But I wonder to myself as I embrace another hug, whether trading my dreams for a piece of reality might serve me better.

The celebrations are all but over, the streets are empty, the people gone home to their beds yet I walk along this road, back to the familiar and safe, alone. Am I scared of change or loss? Even in the new year, some things never change.