Welcome to 2011

2011 is here. Huzzah. Fire your pistols into the air and launch the fireworks. 2010 is dead, and its death was well deserved. Good riddance. May our paths never cross again.

It’s easy, and frankly quite tempting, to spend a good chunk of time and page space roasting the past 12 months until it’s burnt and charred and rendered an almost unrecognizable hunk of charcoal. Sweet Jebus, is it ever tempting.

Poison politics. Natural disasters. The disintegration of the American news media. The continuing plague of reality television. Justin Bieber. Justin Fucking Bieber! I could go on and on and on.

But I’m not going to.

I’m not going to ceaselessly belabor the passing of the past year. Instead, I’m going to turn around and look 2011 in the wide, innocent eyes and embrace it in a big bear-hug while it still has that clean, untainted new-year smell. I’m going to breathe deep and in six months, when 2011 is already fraying around the edges and stained and haggard and looking oh-so-much like 2010, I’ll be able to close my eyes and remember just what 2011 smelled like when it was fresh off the line.

New Years resolutions are a dime a dozen. I say this from both observation and experience. I’ve seen resolutions made and broken – and made and broken them myself – more times than I can count. I’ve already seen a litany of Facebook posts cursing the legion of newbies that flock to the gym after the door slams shut on yet another year of over-indulgence. I’ve seen Facebook posts from people resolving to be more tolerant of said newbies in the coming year. So many resolutions. So much desire to be leaner and stronger and kinder and sleeker and holier and less likely to listen to any albums released by Justin Bieber. So many promises to oneself that end up on the scrap heap by the time the groundhog sticks his fat head out of his hole in early February.

Me? I stopped making resolutions years ago. To me, if you only decide to do something to coincide with a new year, then it’s most probably a half-assed endeavor. I realized what I saw as a futile exercise, and I scrapped it in favor of making decisions based on what I knew were correct/necessary/preferable choices without regard to a calendar. It’s easier that way, and so much less pressure.

So it’s four days into 2011 and I’m eating pineapple for lunch and listening to John Doe and the Sadies and the sun is shining through the window. Not a bad start to the new year. Instead of harboring resentment for the litany of crap that 2010 dumped on us all, I’m going to instead remember it as the year my daughter graduated high school. The year I finally went to Maine. The year I finally, after over 20 years of being a fan, saw a Red Sox game in Fenway Park. The year I stopped letting politics under my skin. The year I watched countless sunsets and heard countless good songs and spent countless hours talking and laughing and drinking cold beers and being happy.

I’m going to try my hardest to make 2011 count. Is that a resolution? Hardly. It should be something we all try to do when faced with a brand new calendar hanging on the wall. Hopefully I can be better in 2011 than I was in 2010. Hopefully I learned something over the past 12 months that I can apply to the next 12 months. I’m just going to give it my best shot, and go into it with my eyes and mind open. I’m going to take the good with the bad and the known with the unknown. The year will deal the hand it deals. All we can do is know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em. Did I just start the year with a Kenny Rogers reference? Your goddamn right I did. It’s going to be that kind of a year, my friends.