You won't find any of that here this year. I'm blogging — briefly — about the present.
New Year's Eve is an extremely personal holiday for me. For me, as for many others, it's a time for introspection and reflection — two things I've always held dear, as part of my core self and as among the most useful tools in my personal bag of tricks. That self-identification with quiet inward thought is why I have nothing to share here about what I'll be doing next year, and nothing to share on how I felt about 2009. Tomorrow, perhaps, I will have something to say to those outside my head about what was and what and where I'd like to be. Or maybe it will take a few weeks. Maybe it won't be until my birthday in January that I post here what others are posting now; or heck! Maybe I'll wait until the Chinese new year (I am half Chinese, after all).
New Year's Eve is a time of meditation, peace, and self-acceptance for me, in which I begin the process of digesting and understanding where and how to lead myself in the coming year. It's a little like hibernation — but even more like the chrysalis stage of a caterpillar-turning-butterfly's life cycle. It looks like I'm doing nothing, but invisibly, on the inside, things are moving, reshaping themselves, transforming. When I emerge on the other side of the year-change, there will be change inside me, too; but unlike with the butterfly, my transformation will remain invisible. And I'll have the rest of a fresh new year to bring those changes into the light, where others can see them.
And I'm not much different from anyone else in the basics of the holiday; we're all thinking about change, progress, making things greater and better and more wonderful.
So happy transforming, dear butterflies. Let there be peace on Earth and in everyone's hearts, for as long as it takes to gather the strength for the future. See you on the other side.
