The introspection starts around my birthday.  Moments of speculation, moments of wonder – the cosmic questions posed and answers hypothesized and deduced.  Maybe there’s a god above, but all I’ve ever learned from all of this is simply that the answers are never truly clear – but they do ultimately come.

2008 will be looked at as a good year for me.  From start to finish, I was able to accomplish a lot – such as a move into doing something I love full time.  I have been surrounded by great friends and have developed a stronger rapport with old ones.  I saw marriages, pregnancies, and child births.  I smiled and laughed.  I even cried – but those tears brought forth change and evolution to my life.  For once, my year wasn’t about waiting or transitions – it was merely about growth.

As 2009 comes around, the only thing I’m “missing” is a love life.  I put missing in quotation marks because it’s not a void that I notice.  My life is so busy, my job and friendships so fulfilling that I don’t necessarily feel the need for a relationship.  Yet, in the check list of things society deems necessary – it is the only thing I am really missing.  I wonder where I will meet them or how.  I get advice from plenty of people.  From a VP at work telling me to hold on to my date to our corporate Christmas party to Gwen Bell speculating in jest that I’d meet that special someone on Twitter (like she did) – I hear it from all around.  All that does is reinforce the fact that I don’t know where or how anything will happen in the future.  The goal is to simply live your life with the passion and zest that you want to have – and the rest will fill in the blanks.  I have to believe that’s true because, in 2008, it was true for everything else.

So as the clock turns to Christmas Eve and a week until the end of 2008, I can’t help but feel anticipation for what’s to come.  Everything seems to be building to an incredible climax that I hope to carry on for years and years.  It feels great to be so optimistic about life and illustrates how far I’ve come since my days in Massachusetts, Michigan, Syracuse and so many others.  Hallelujah, indeed….