New Year's Eve 2023
It's New Year's Eve. Last Sunday was Christmas Eve and now it is the cusp of a whole new year.
There are typically traditions surrounding new beginnings. And since new beginnings can come in the oddest ways, the traditions that surround them can be unique to the new beginning they are signifying.
In my family as a child New Year's Eve was always spent gathering with neighbors, relatives and friends. It was a time for laughter and excitement as the midnight hour approached. It was a night unlike every other night of the year, when we were not banished to bed at the stroke of 9 but allowed instead to stay up and watch the ball drop on Time Square or stay up and actually see our clocks in California strike midnight.
As an adult, I settled into a more comfortable familiarity with ushering in a new year. As a much older adult, staying up until midnight is hard. It does not serve me or anyone who has to be around me the next day very well for me to deprive myself of sleep.
But I can see spending quiet time talking to Greg about our year, listing the things that were amazing and wonderful and highlighting the joyful moments of one year as we move closer to another one. It can set a tone for anticipating what the things are, a year from now, that we might be talking about.
It's an interesting day, this day. I never did get caught up in the tradition of New Years resolutions, but then I also don't practice giving things up for Lent. But it's still an interesting day.
Today, I am giving myself permission to just say this to anyone who is listening. Next Sunday will be the beginning of a new season of WTVGT. Season one is done. And even though there were glitches and a few stumbles and some growing pains, I feel good about what we've done. And I feel grateful. Grateful for life, grateful for this life. It is amazing.
As we move deeper into this new season, I want to explore having guests join me to talk about some of the topics that people want to hear about. I think eventually, if not already, you're going to get tired of hearing me talk all by myself. And I know some amazing people who have insights and perspectives that I might never figure out. And it's also possible I'll run out of steam, or run out of things to share, or maybe even run out of time before either of those things happen.
So I am going to leave this first season with this:
Thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for wanting to make your own life or the life of someone else better. Thank you for coffee and feedback and sharing the way these podcasts have effected you.
For now, this is SJ. And I hope you'll come back again to WTVGT