New year, new life

It's funny how doing something so normal as celebrating New Year's Eve can draw attention to everything else that's abnormal in your life. I'm in Florida, about to celebrate a new decade with a family I've just met. And while most people's posts, conversations and status lines are about the changes that have happened in the past decade, I can't stop thinking about the ridiculousness of my last few months. For me, this decade only became unusual at the very end.

I met a Frenchman, fell in love, left my career and now find myself cut adrift career-wise and living in Nice, France. Although, as I mentioned, I'm in Florida right now, staying with his family.

Rather than scrambling to find dress shoes I can wear in the snow, I'm typing in the sunshine at the side of a pool. It doesn't feel like the time for resolutions... and maybe it isn't for me. I made mine when I boarded the plane (alone for the first time) to France at the end of September.

Then, I had decided that I would stop wondering what was right and wrong in terms of the path I was following and simply decided to choose life, regardless of the path -- to choose living, feeling and experiencing over stupid worrying, over-analyzing and waiting.

Now, however, I'm starting to realize that what I did in September was the romantic equivalent of buying a gym pass for Christmas.

Every year, I've watch my gym in Ottawa fill up with newbies who crowd the machines with their good intentions. But then their visits taper off as the memory of their resolutions disappears. That happens at about three or four months -- now, about my distance from that first plane ride.

I'm stil happy, still (sort of) in France, have still leaped. But my resolution to not wait for things to happen seems to be getting a little flabby. I'm going to make it do a few laps around the block tonight.