New Year

So this is the New Year/And I don't feel any different ...

I've always loved that line from Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism album. It's true, isn't it? Like birthdays (one of which I've just had as well), new years hold so much promise and potential for change. The countdown ends, the ball drops and you guzzle champagne waiting for the feeling that something significant has happened. Or you wake up in the morning and suddenly you're a year older. Looking in the mirror, you expect, like Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles, to see a difference in your face. Some visible evidence of a milestone reached.

More often than not there's nothing there.



At first glance, this year is just like the last few. On the surface there is no acknowledgement of time passed. I am twenty-seven, and I feel like I did at twenty-six, or twenty-five, or any of the last few years of my life. Once again, as the year and my age tick upward, I've jumped onto the losing-weight bandwagon (original, I know; yet it remains as important, and difficult, a goal for me as ever). I'm doing the same job, living in the same apartment, watching the same TV shows, fighting the same temptations and anxieties. But there are signs beginning to emerge that I may not be able to sing the same tune come 2011.

For one, my department at work has just gotten approval for a major technology change; three months from now at least half of my job will be completely different from what it has been for the last four and a half years. I'm proud of my boss for making this headway, and the improvements we'll see will be like going from a horse-and-carriage to a rocketship. But I confess I'm just a bit discomfited by the change, since I have known my job well for several years now, and I enjoy the feeling of expertise I've earned by doing the same procedures in the same way month after month. Soon I'll be a newbie again.

For another, I recently found out that several of my dearest family members are ill. A week or two after my uncle started radiation for stage IIIa lung cancer, his wife, my godmother, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her diagnosis is as positive as can be hoped; they caught it early, it is small and has not spread, and she has gone in for surgery which will hopefully be able to get it all out. But it is still too much for one family to handle; and it is still frightening and sobering to each one of us. Above all this news emphasizes to me just how far away I am from my family, and that I'm getting to a point when that distance is more and more of a problem.

And finally, my decision about where I'll end 2010 is coming up. My boss and I will talk about my plans (read: commitment) in the next week so that he can begin looking for a replacement if necessary and I can start exploring other options. It's scary to have to make such a big decision in the next five days, and scarier still to bring it to irrevocable life by saying it out loud.

So this is the new year ....

And soon I may feel very different.