No More Echoes

It is December 31, with only a few hours of daylight left in 2008. The past three years have been an insane roller coaster of depression, elation, confusion and contusions. The end of 2006 was bad. All of 2007 was worse. And 2008 was a goddamn train wreck. I cannot afford to have another echo of the past three years. It would ruin me.
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Here's a recap of the past 12 months, starting with the bad: I was temporarily homeless and living out of a plastic bag. I got a black eye. A friend died too young. I spent much of the year in a deep state of loneliness and depression. The good: I wrote a lot, much of it very painful yet very, very good. I contributed to a story that won a national journalism award. I learned things about myself I never knew before. I went to the Bahamas for a short vacation. My work took me to Salt Lake City and St. Louis and Chicago and Seattle and Las Vegas and Phoenix and San Antonio and Toronto and Washington, D.C. I learned of a soon-to-be addition to my sister's family.
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I don't know what 2009 will hold. I can't say that it's starting off on good footing or poor, because I will start it without a reliable source of income and no health benefits. It's a change, and that's a positive, I suppose. Tomorrow I am jobless. Tomorrow I am an island. Tomorrow I am a mercenary. But at least there will be a tomorrow.
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This is not the life I want. This is not the life I envisioned having. So I will change it. I will embrace new things. I will go new places. I will get in even better shape than I am now. I will work harder to be happy and involve more people in my life. I will enrich myself. I will write more short stories, hopefully even a few that won't make the reader want to leap from the nearest tall building. I will finish the novel -- my fourth -- that I began in February. I will love. And I will live. All this sounds so unbelievably childish and corny, but it's helping me. Besides, who else is reading this but me?
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Yes, I will live a better life this year. I won't pretend to know what that entails just yet. But 2009, wherever it leads me, will be good.