Resolution

It is Thursday morning, January 1, 2009. The dawn of a new year. I'm sitting at my laptop, which is on top of my plywood makeshift desk, in my dining room that is really more of an office, sipping Starbucks Christmas Blend coffee out of a mug that boasts a panoramic picture of the Chicago skyline. It is way early, and I'm hitting both jobs today. The Starbucks gig promises to be a bit on the hellish side, what with a full 8 hours (time & a half with the holiday, but murder on my poor back and knee) and the hockey game at Wrigley Field (please tell me that drunken Blackhawks fans behave better than drunken Cubs fans? Please?). But it's all good. It is all so very, very good.

Yesterday was the year's close, a time of reflection. Today is a new year's beginning, a time of resolution. And what is my resolution for 2009?

Simple. To enjoy it.

In looking back on the last several years, I can make lists of numerous accomplishments. I see where hard work and fortitude have served me well. I see areas of my life that need improvement, where I can endeavor to strike some balance, gain better perspective. But what I don't see a lot of is joy.

As a child, you are capable of experiencing joy in the virtually all things that surround you; much of the time that joy is brought right to your eyes and to your hands, and it is easy and carefree and without struggle. Things are different as an adult, as the necessities of living and demands of ambition make compromise necessary, and the randomness of the universe reveals to me every day that nothing, absolutely nothing, is promised us or owed us or offered with any kind of guarantee. As such, one never experiences the same kind of burden-free glee as an adult that they could as a child.

I realize now, though, that joy is like hope, in that it is a choice. You choose to feel the joy in your life just as you do to see the hope. In my efforts to improve, gain, maintain, I think I've missed out on a great deal of the joy that is being alive. You know, that whole breathing-not-being-dead thing I talked about yesterday. Well, today, on this first day of a new year, as I look forward to new challenges and to the necessity of change, I hereby resolve to choose, every single day, to enjoy the life that I have been so blessed to live.

And if a drunken Blackhawks fan pukes on my shoes today, hell, I've got a great story to tell in a bar or on this blog, right? That is the power of choice.

-C.