at the beginning again

image via: http://theopendoorcommunity.com/Images/mgj-out-open-door.jpg

It's a beautiful day here for the first day of the new year, a day that is really like any other day, like the one before it and the one after it and yet we imbue this day with so much optimism and possibility, this arbitrary choice to end one cycle and begin another. It would make more sense for the winter solstice to be the new year, the end of the long night and the beginning of the long day.

We're having our traditional breakfast, a young tradition, yes, something that we have started doing since we took up permanent residence here at the country house...mimosas, bacon, eggs, sweet rolls. The food is not always the same but the mimosas, the big breakfast are.

Later today I will be accompanying my sister to a New Year's Day open house. It is at the house of a friend of hers from high school, a girl who came from a broken home and life with her mother was such that she spent a great deal of her time at our house and my own opinion of life at my house was not all that great. How much worse was her's that she thought our house was so much better. I was 15 then.

I remember when my sister got married, the bridesmaids had her 'spinster' party at this woman's apartment. I was 16 when my sister married, was at the party and got drunk and didn't want to go home. We all slept over though someone was supposed to bring me home. My parents were furious with me the next day and with everyone else for not bringing me home. Oh, I was so hungover. I think back and wonder, as I did then, what was the big deal? It's not like I had never slept over at a friend's house before. But I guess that even though 19 year old girls could have their own apartments, jobs, get married and get pregnant, they weren't considered adults. At least not by my parents.

But I digress.

I fear the coming year is going to be even more contentious than this last one. Our population has become so polarized that middle ground no longer exists. The full court press by the opposing party to make our president a one termer by obstructing everything that could be construed as good by even the most extreme portions of our population will continue until the general election this coming fall, something that I don't really understand considering he has caved on everything, including his most recent attack on our civil rights. I now find myself in the position of not having anyone to vote for.

I don't see conditions improving much this year but I could be wrong, really want to be wrong. It may be that people are so tired of the depressed state of things, so tired of the fear that our politicians continue to whip up because a fearful population is easier to control, that they will continue to gather and march in larger and larger groups.

I had just about decided that we were, in fact, a nation of sheep, overfed on fear as well as food. I wondered why the people didn't rise up and say 'enough'. And then they did. 

I don't know what the future, this year, holds for us, if we will see more work coming our way. Sometimes I think maybe this career is at an end, that when people finally have some disposable income, because it's never been the rich that were our client base but the middle class, that we and what we do will have faded from memory.

Regardless, we will continue to create, to make if only for our own enjoyment.

Well, the door is open, welcoming whatever comes, whatever this new year brings.