Hello, friends! While I am less than thrilled to be sitting in my office this morning, I am happy to be back to the Auto Tunes. This blog has been one of my favorite things about 2009.

I was in Maine with my family for Christmas, and had, overall, a nice (and often musical) time. My young niece perked up every time she heard music, often saying one pop song or another on the radio or in a store was her mom’s “favorite.” Saw The Princess and the Frog and enjoyed all the N’awlins sounds — gospel, jazz, zydeco, etc. — on the soundtrack. Went to church in my parents’ new town on Christmas Eve, and despite a lackluster service, again burst into tears at the congregational singing of “Silent Night” — unbidden, uncontrollable weeping.

Today, New Year’s Eve, kind of snuck up on me, given all the madness of Christmas and cross-country travel. We’ll close out 2009 and all of the aughts tonight, and I am ready. More than ready.

I moved to my last city in the summer of 2000 and left it in the summer of 2009, meaning the aughts have, for me, very clear and defined bookends. And the decade was not, for me, one of the happiest. I often felt stuck, frustrated, aimless, and even hopeless. I felt as though somewhere along the line, I’d lost the thread of my life, and given too much time and heart and energy to the wrong things. Even though, in those years, I made friendships that I cherished and will cherish always, I too often felt lost in a threatening wilderness. Even worse, I feared it was a wilderness of my own making.

Luckily, the chance for a geographical move arrived in the spring of ’09, and in early June I moved on, moved forward, moved one step closer to a new mental/emotional/spiritual state, toward something like happiness.

I thought about all this as I drove to work this morning, five minutes of my commute backed by Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida.” The song is of the sort that is (as documented repeatedly in these pages) right up my alley: operatic, overwrought, joyful and triumphant (ironic lyrics aside).

That is how I want to feel in the year and decade ahead. Joyful and triumphant. I want to continue to collect the most wonderful and amazing people and call them my friends. I want to keep hacking the path out of the wilderness and create my own refuge of security and warmth. I want hope and redeeming grace.

That’s not too much to ask, right?

Happy new year, friends. Viva la vida.

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