The restaurant is full and noisy in the middle of the afternoon. People come alive with a few days celebration and escape from the daily necessity of work. Outside, the sun is a crisp circle, so perfect as to be unreal, a finely drawn dot of brighter white against a dull white sky. Snowflakes drift with gleeful disregard for gravity. Outside, beyond the poinsettia and the spider plant in the window, a blind man, complete with shades and a cane, gets out of a car, followed by a pretty wife and young son. Someone for everyone. Hope.

The end of a year. Our dates may be more or less arbitrary, but, at least in these parts, it’s a fitting time for it, the days having just reached their shortest, the darkest part of the year – the light only grows from here on in.

They’re just numbers on a calendar, its true. Maybe “Nothing Changes on New Years Day…” Maybe. But one can always hope.

As I told a friend a few nights ago, If you know you can’t go back and you can’t stay here...You have to move. You have to find a way to move forward. You fight and kick and bite and bash yourself against it again and again, a fly on a window, praying the cold, merciless bastard will eventually crack.

The problem with that, of course, is that said fly nearly always ends up legs-up on the windowsill. Admirable tenacity, perhaps, but the end result is the same.

Ok. So that was needlessly grim. Sometimes he gets splattered with a rolled up future-shop flyer first. Either way, I know I have a lot to be thankful for. I am gainfully employed. Affordably housed. I am finally in the process of buying my first fossil fuel powered vehicle (My penance to the North American consumer god for having convinced my family to give to charity this Christmas). I have a cat, at least, who loves me. And while we’re keeping this quiet for the time being, I may actually have figured out (or finally caved in to) what I want to be when I grow up. (This means, of course, I might have to get on with, well, growing up. Inconvenient, that)
I even have, wonder of wonders, the first feeble hints of a plan.
Progress indeed.

I have no idea how we’re going to pull it off.