Optimistic

I'm once again writing with a bit of insomnia, but it feels as though it will abate shortly.

The dis-assembly of Meghan's Christmas Tree (which functions, as many things do, as ours) was the big project for the day. I mentioned last year how much I hate the real and metaphorical boxing up of Christmas. That has always been the case, and definitely gets worse with age.

As we boxed the ornaments and removed the fake branches from the fake trunk, I began to say reassuring things in an effort to back Meghan and me off of the emotional cliff to which the re-emergence of the Real World can and does drive both of us at this time every year. The only words that seemed to work for me were old standards. I spun the end of the holidays as a beginning and not an end, as many wise or desperate widows, breakers-up, and newly married grooms do.

After giving the psychobabble some time to wear off, I concluded that I am actually quite optimistic about the year just begun. The most obvious cause for optimism is our June 27 wedding, and I am very excited about this. I am quite sure that subject will take up a good bit of the space on my blog for the next several months. But let me simply leave the subject by saying that I feel more genuine excitement, happiness, and peace over my impending wedding to Meghan that I have felt for anything before.

There are many reasons in addition to the wedding that give me reason to be upbeat. I feel like I am in a good professional spot, with many opportunities approaching. I am mentally as clear-headed as I remember being. I am about twenty-five pounds overweight - only some of which can be rightly blamed on the Great Back Trauma of 2008 - but I should be able to begin correcting that in six weeks. My finances are rapidly improving from the beating they took in college, grad school, five years of very poor pay, and two years in Nashville. Socially, I am within a one-hour drive of eighty-percent of my friends and a half-day drive of all of my family.

At a time when almost all news is wary of the future and Blue Monday is just two weeks away, it seems important to remind myself that the time between Christmases has a pretty good bit of promise as well - regardless of what the paper or that blank spot in the den would have me believe.