Out with the old...

Last night after cassoulet and many glasses of wine, I stood on the street with new friends watching fireworks and reflecting on the past year. One New Year's Eve tradition I hadn't seen before was the burning of old, taking in of new. Well, that's what I'm going to call it, for lack of a better term. Everyone gathered strips of paper and wrote things on them that they wanted to rid themselves of - anything from a bad habit to a bad job - and then we burned them, quite ceremoniously, in a recycled whole roasted tomato can. Afterwards, we all raised our glasses and thought about a thing we each wanted to happen for the next year - and then we drank it in, whatever was in our glasses and in our hearts. This is a very different approach to the new year - for me it had always been a pot of black-eyed peas, which signified luck and prosperity for the next year. But that seems to leave good and bad to chance. What I liked about burning and taking in was the fact that whatever was mine to burn and mine to have were mine - and my responsibility to make them happen. Chance is always a player, but less so here. So today I make no black-eyed peas. I'll enjoy the now day-old cassoulet, watching Spike Jonze videos while washing my laundry, thinking about what I need to do for myself to make my frosty-night dreams come true.

That begs the question - how, if at all, do I reflect on the last year? Do I have any regrets? Any missed opportunities? Anything I would change? And what did I burn?

Anyone who knows me knows the answer to this already, but if you don't know it let me say it now. I am the product of every experience I've ever had - good and bad - and I am so very happy with where I am today I can't possibly regret anything I've seen or done. Had I not had the experiences I had, I might not have ever made it to the place I am, either physically or emotionally. Would I do things differently? Next time, perhaps. But would I change anything if I could? No, never. A decision not made or made too late is a decision nonetheless, so whenever I'm faced with choice I know I must participate, otherwise I lose the right to fight. Everything is a choice, life is a choice. Being in it (or being afraid of it) is a choice, and no matter how bad some of the choices have been, I always learn from them. That's my responsibility.

So what does 2006 have in store for me?

Everything. Just wait and see.

But I'm not going to tell you what I burned or what I took in. That's too easy.