Start here, now

I like beginnings--the new year, a new month, each solstice and equinox, even Mondays, the beginning of a new week, a fresh start. I like fresh starts.

And resolutions? Sure, for any of those beginnings. For me, to do better, live better, be better is a constant evolution. Do I break my resolutions or let them lapse? Yes, I do. But then Monday comes around.

As eager as I feel to greet the New Year, I'm also sad to see 2010 go. For me it was a milestone year (turning 50) and a year that brought both opportunities and hard loss. Leaving this year feels, in a way, like I'm leaving the people who left.

But the new year is coming, a chance to resolve and risk and write.

The Writer's Almanac today quoted Junot Diaz as saying, "What we do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy."

I raise my glass and my pen to new hope and great joy.

Happy New Year!