Sunday, January 03, 2010

New Year's Blue Moon Not So Rare, But the Palindrome Two Days Later Is

(Click title link for article) New Year's Eve there was a blue moon, the second full moon in a month. It isn't actually all that uncommon, but is still cool and only happens on that particular night every 19 years.

Then on January 2nd, as my FB friend Sophie Pyle cleverly noted, the date created a palindrome: 01-02-2010 which reads the same both backwards and forwards. (Is forwards a word?) And it turns out that this is rarer than Haley's Comet passing by, which happens every 75 years or so. While it's true the previous palindrome date happened on 10-02-2001, the one before that was 620 years earlier, on 08-31-1380 -- cool, huh?! There will be 36 in all this millennium, the final one falling on 09-22-2290.

So what does that have to do with a hill of beans? Not much. Just trying to avoid getting down to the inevitable review of the last year, which is probably best left alone, unpoked and unprodded. Very briefly, there were a few lows and anyone who knows me knows what they were -- no need to rehash any of that here. The one that rankles most today, however, as I reread this poor neglected blog for the first time in ages and look ahead with resolutions in mind, is the fact that I cannot honestly say I'm writing a novel any more. I was writing a novel and now I'm not. Hopefully in 2010 I will start writing a novel again. That would be a good and happy thing.

As for highs, well luckily there were plenty of those too. My beautiful, ever-changing and growing girls, the wonderful friends, great trips, races run, happy clients and Leadership Arlington all made for a full rich year, capped off with the decision to start a new job working for Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) downtown. Starting on 12/2, the day after returning from Thanksgiving in Spain, was a little challenging and hectic, with the holiday season suddenly upon us as well. But all new jobs are like that, and now I start the new year fairly well settled in and really excited about the work and challenges ahead.

As always in my incredibly lucky life, I have so much to be thankful for and so little room for whining. (Although god knows that's never stopped me, ha!)

I received a fantastic book from my friend Marisa for Christmas: The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship by Don Miguel Ruiz. It has some wonderful, sensible and most important, do-able advice for minimizing the drama and stress that invade so many relationships, mainly because of fear.

So as these crazy arctic winds whip the chairs off my porch outside and send tree branches crashing into the windows, here's my short list of resolutions for 2010 (in order of difficulty): drink more water; get back to the damn novel at some point this year; think about others at least as often as myself; and move forward with a heart full of love and forgiveness, aware of and overcoming my fears -- to live in the NOW, laugh and be happy, no matter what life flings this way. Piece o' cake, right?!