I’ll give 2018 this much: it ended well.
Not that it was particularly bad or difficult year, for our family — we have far too much to be thankful for. Gratitude is due, and given.
And yet.
If years were U2 albums, well, 2018 wasn’t exactly “The Joshua Tree”, was it?
“No Line On The Horizon” — yeah, that’s another U2 album, one so forgettable I had to look it up just now — seems a more appropriate match for 2018. Amorphous. Directionless. Interstitial.
Generally unloved.
And yet…
2018 ended with color and joy. Sunset on a beach called Silver Strand, in the unexpected company of old friends and their offspring.
It was a low-key New Year’s Eve in the very best of ways; effortless, comfortable, and fun. Kids exhausted themselves early, playing tag on the beach in the dark, and we had everybody tucked in at a Residence Inn well before midnight. I stayed awake — waiting, in a pitch-dark hotel room, for 12:00 fireworks to appear on my Apple Watch — and went to sleep completely happy.
And so:
I woke with high hopes for 2019. An unanticipated spirit for embracing the year ahead, that, three days later, I still haven’t managed to shake.
Maybe it’s because we have European summer adventures on the books, already; maybe it’s a gut awareness that change and reinvention are coming. All I know is that 2019 deserves a rallying cry, and I’m rolling with one that could be a caution, or a warning… but let’s carry the musical metaphor, and call it a goal:
“Achtung, Baby!”
