Out with the old, in with the new

It's New Year's Eve 2010...well, not REALLY. As I write this it's a few days from now but the last thing in the world I will want to be doing on NYE (or have time for, for that matter) is blogging. In a few hours, my baby sister is getting married and we are going to party. This photo was taken earlier this week and as I said on Facebook, it's full of awesome.

That's my new brother-in-law Andrew posing in front of the Englert Theater, the spot where tonight they will exchange their vows, say "I do" and have one hell of a NYE party.

Last year when I wrapped up 2009, the title of the post was "Good riddance to bad rubbish." I'm happy to report that 2010 has been a massive improvement on 2009. If it hadn't been, I daresay I would have been ready to throw in the towel. We didn't have an epic vacation (Heidi did, I didn't) and Heidi's been short on new releases as the year wraps up, but I look back on 2010 with much more satisfaction and happiness than I did at 2009. Although it got off to a rough start for me personally, I have to say that I'm in a better place than I have been in a long time. And while Heidi still struggles with chronic pain of a nebulous etiology, she seems to be more at peace with it overall and isn't letting it run her life like so many people with chronic pain seem to. Just like I've learned that my anxious brain is not the boss of me, she doesn't allow her chronic pain to be the boss of her. Oh sure, we both screw up now and then, but I think overall, things are much better than they were a year ago.

Toward the end of the year, I had a big revelation that this year, no one could accuse me of not living. It's so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day birth/school/work/death. I took chances and stepped outside my comfort zones. I had some great successes and some massive failures. I worked hard and played hard. I met new people. I was a wise man and amazingly foolish as well. In the end, I was human and I LIVED.

I don't really regret anything this year. Even the times I have behaved poorly or acted like an idiot have shaped me into something that I wasn't as 2010 dawned. As I always say, we're all an amalgam of all our experiences - good and bad and in between - so be careful what you wish away.

Happy New Year to everyone. We'll be dancing tonight and ringing in 2011 with class and style.

Good riddance to bad rubbish

So here we are. It's New Year's Eve. I work today but at least I work during the day thanks to someone at work taking pity on my soul and trading with me. Good friends old and new are scheduled to arrive for NYE festivities tonight and I'm excited about that. I still have to put the NYE playlist together on my iPod, but I should have time after work to do that. It should be a fine cap to a year that by almost all accounts could have been much better.

"Good riddance to bad rubbish" is something I always remember my dad saying when I was growing up and I can think of no more fitting phrase as we get ready to say goodbye to 2009. I'm fond of saying to Heidi that apart from our westward vacation this summer and her books getting published, 2009 was one of the worst on record. Like most things in life, that's an overgeneralization and doesn't strictly apply, but when I look back at the last year, I can't help but think "good riddance to bad rubbish."

Certainly, there were good things, but it seemed like for every good thing, there was something massively sucky. 2009 was the year that we saw one of our (much younger than us) good friends walk just a little too closely to death's door. My wife spent the first half of 2009 fighting a mystery ailment which saw her in almost constant chronic pain and while it at least has a name now, she still has her good days and her bad days. The economy, while recovering, is still in the shitter for the most part. Our car defined "rise of the machines" as we ended up doing about 3000 bucks worth of repairs on it over the last 12 months. Most of it was scheduled maintenance to keep us from having to buy a new car, but still. And despite all my effort to pay down a significant portion of our credit card debt, we have a bit more at year's end than we started with.

It would be easy to sit and wallow in the bad but as this year comes to an end, I'm going to do my damndest to focus on the positive. Almost all the crap events of the last year have a silver lining, and while I'm not going to be all Pollyana about it, I am going to choose to focus on the positive.

I don't do resolutions - they just set you up for failure - but exciting changes are afoot in 2010. I'm going to start preliminarily looking at board certification although in exactly what I haven't decided. It probably won't happen in earnest until 2011, but looking at the web site makes me think I need to start the wheels turning now. I have not done anything outside of the required continuing education to keep my license current to really further my career since I graduated and this seems like a logical next step. And as per my usual at this time of year, I am going to continue to redouble my efforts to pay down credit card debt, especially in light of what looks like the loss of the great promo rate we have right now (although you can bet your last dollar that I'll be negotiating that come March.)

But for now, let's bring on the party. Just because 2009 was not the greatest doesn't mean that we can't have a little fun at year's end.

Back tomorrow with some highlights from this year's blogging. But for now, let's have some ABBA, because they almost always make things better.

Be kind to my mistakes

2008 is several hours from being ancient history. It's been a hell of a ride. I have had more ups and downs this year than in any year in recent memory. This is neither good nor bad - rather, it just is. It's been a year full of new faces and old ones reentering my life. It's been concerts and road trips and Guitar Hero and all the other things that made 2008 what it was. It was 275 blog posts (including this one), reaching my 5th year of blogging and my 1000th post within a few weeks of each other. We lost some people this year who shuffled off this mortal coil - my last grandparent, Jeff's mom, and we lost other people due to the continental drift that seems to pervade most relationships.

Robbie over at Chart Rigger did a 2008 highlights post - I have a few of my own as well.

• Sticky & Sweet Tour - Chicago Style
• Dolly in May, and Dolly in November
• Nerdery Week
• New York City, April 2008
• My parents hit the 40th anniversary mark, as Madonna turns the big 5-0.

And those are just the highlights. I am not a fan of New Year's resolutions - mostly they just set you up to fail. But if there's any one thing I want to do in 2009 is to take Kate Bush's advice and be kind to my mistakes. I am perhaps my own worst critic and do not always treat myself very well - at least not with the same sort of kindness that I save for everyone else. But this year, I'm getting some of that if it kills me.

I can't remember a time that was more uncertain than right now. But if we all are just a little bit more forgiving of each and other and be kind to each other's mistakes - as Ike & Tina Turner said, I think it's gonna work out fine.

Happy 2009 everyone!