New Year

First, I wanted to share this article I read in the NY Times about Bobby Fischer. I just thought it was a great read. Nothing specific I want to say about it, and I think that's OK.

Yesterday I found myself at a low-key apartment party on the border between the West Village and Chelsea. Sixth floor in a nice building, about 20-25 people rolling through over the course of the evening, homemade mac and cheese, roast pork, champagne, a cake after midnight. For the first time in a long time, maybe for the first time ever, the evening felt just like a regular evening, just me hanging out with some friends at a party, drinking and chatting and feeling good.

Usually there seems to be something about New Year that's a little disconcerting. And I don't mean the sense of expectation, that "shit! This is the change-up! Tomorrow is going to be a freaking different year!" thing that happens, or the feeling I've tended to get that New Year is the last holiday before you're thrown back down to the bottom and you have to embark on that steady climb through a cold winter, and then a rainy and somewhat depressing spring, before you finally get to a summer that's only half-way satisfying because, really, New York in the summer is not that cool. Often it's just been kind of depressing, the way we kick up the notch at the end by one number and suddenly it's all a do-over, a year you built for 365 days that just vanishes in one second and is replaced by this emptiness that's 365 days vast, and for what purpose?

The idea of a "year" has actually always bothered me, because really it forces me into this mindset that segments everything out according to this period of time and I remember things based on what year it was when something happened. And I think when you break up life into these quantifiable nuggets - perhaps just really for ease of reference - you're more likely to feel that a particular period of time was actually more good or more bad than it really was. But the thing about life is that it's just one long line of experiences and situations. We're constantly adding to one pool of acquired wisdom and evolving thought so the idea of a year sort of undermines the wholeness of a life. It makes things seem more trivial than they are. Maybe "trivial" is the wrong word but it's the only one that's coming to mind right now. Maybe what I'm trying to say is that I don't want to remember a particular year, I don't want to say "oh, 2008 was ________." Instead I just want to think about it in the context of 26 (almost 27!) straight years of growth (and, of course, some periods of contraction).

So last night when I'm thinking about it, thinking about the idea that the world was going to progress into this thing we've identified as "2009," I didn't have that sense of vehemence that I usually have. I didn't feel a surge of anxiety over missed opportunity that I usually get in thinking about what I haven't accomplished over the last year. At the same time, I didn't get that boost of adrenaline at the idea that with a blank slate, this was a reawakening of possibility, a chance to recreate everything. Again, those are extremes, but it's like the New Year just naturally inspires that in people, at least in me.

Rather, I stood there, champagne in hand, looking at the faces of the people in the room, my friends who had come out to spend the evening with me, and things seemed more subdued than they have in the past. It wasn't the end of anything and it wasn't the beginning of something new. It was just a good moment in a pretty decent life, and that was enough for me.