2010 Ho!

New Year's Eve always meant celebrations. As a kid, I wanted to stay up and eat a lot of chips and drink lots of coke and watch TV. As I grew older, I wanted to party and dance but only managed to continue the tradition of junk food and TV. The only thing that changed was that I didn't really try to make Jan 1st the best day of my life, so the rest of the year would go well. I guess, at some point I realized that it doesn't really work like that. Like Santa Claus. Say it but don't believe it. Something on those lines.

So, when I fell sick this NYE and had to sleep through the night as we moved from one year to another, one decade to the next, I felt no regret. In fact, I did not even feel the weird sinking sensation that I have felt almost all the previous years, on the last day of the year. 2009 hasn't exactly been what I would call the best year of my life. There have been some good things and I've met some really amazing people but overall, it hasn't been my best year. If anything, it's been a continuation of the year 2008 and a journey down darker alleys.

I woke up on the morning of 2010, feeling refreshed from a good night's sleep. I felt good about starting a new day. I've been saying that 2010 is going to be a good year for me. I am not as sick today as I was yesterday. I had an early morning bath & breakfast on a holiday. A phone conversation I'd been looking forward to.  A reading marathon planned for the weekend. Whereas I'm still in bed, watching all the episodes of season 3 of The Big Bang Theory, I don't really feel like I've started the year badly. In fact, I'm looking forward to it. So, I've gone from the sinking feeling of the year gone by on New Year's Eve to a welcome feeling of the year ahead.

When amma called me this morning, the first thing we said to each other was "Happy New Year". It reminded me of the times when, as kids, bro and I would answer the phone and say "Happy New Year" to the caller, as if  it were a replacement to "Hello". We were excited about wishing as many people as we could. Those were the days when there were no telemarketers and unknown callers calling on our home landline, so we would most definitely know whoever was calling. For the rest of the month of Jan, we said HNY the first time we met somebody. If we forgot to do that and we got a 'Happy New Year' first, it was embarassing. Shopkeepers, the milkman, friends, teachers, relatives, no matter who it was, you just couldn't forget.

Dates. Remembering to put the right year at the end of every date was another big deal. I would be so proud of myself every time I remembered to end the date correctly and not have to erase it or score it out. Every time I had to do that, it was like a failure. It was so exciting to see the new year on the dates in the newspapers. It sounds rather silly now and hard to understand but it made me happy back then. Maybe it's partly because I don't need to remember dates anymore. All I have to do is look at the bottom right corner of my monitor and I have the date. Change of month or year hold no meaning anymore.

I used to make resolutions every New Year, write them on paper and forget all about it until I had to do the same next year. Yet, making resolutions was such a fun activity. A couple of years ago, I decided that it was not worth making any resolutions because I would never remember them anyway. This year, I have one. Yeah, just one. I am going to make this year mine.