So this is the new year
And I don’t feel any different
The clanking of crystal
Explosions off in the distance (in the distance)

So this is the new year
And I don’t have any resolutions
For self assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions.

~Death Cab for Cutie: The New Year

Fireworks. Check. HBO Homeland marathon. Check. Alone at the stroke of midnight. Check. Ah yes, 2013 rang in very similar to 2012, yet so completely different. Everything is different. This is the new year.

I am taking a much-needed reflection break from packing, and stepping aside from the mountain of boxes that threaten to crush me. This is the new year and I am presently wavering between elated and exhausted.

If on January 1st, 2012 you had asked me what and where I’d be a year later…this is not it. I can say that neither Jason nor I could have predicted this incredible twist and turn of life that we now find ourselves in.

Last year I spent NYE curled up on the couch with the flu, watching the entire first season of Homeland. At midnight I wandered downstairs with Iona and sat on the steps of my building and watched the fireworks alone. Although Jason was celebrating from a mere 120 miles East, we couldn’t have been farther away from each other.

I rang in 2012 with my heart in one place, my mind in another, my body fighting me, and my moral compass spinning.

So everybody put your best suit or dress on
Let’s make believe that we are wealthy for just this once
Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
As thirty dialogs bleed into one

This year I spent most of the day packing and finishing season two of Homeland. I stopped production for a few precious hours to spend time with perfect friends, and then found myself back home before midnight. Miss Iona and I once again sat watching and listening to the fireworks alone. But this time my heart, mind, body and compass are pointed decidedly East…straight East to the coast.

Jason is still somewhere in Afghanistan trying to get home to us. This distance though, seems smaller and somehow shorter than Raleigh-to-Wilmington ever did. Any anxiety I carry is simply in the desire to have him returned safely and soundly. Time zones, oceans, communication challenges be damned. This time, the distance has not held us back.

I wish the world was flat like the old days
Then I could travel just by folding a map
No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways
There’d be no distance that could hold us back

A relocation, a return, a reconnection. A wedding to plan, a child to see, a house to buy. One city, one home, one future. This is the new year.

There’d be no distance that could hold us back.
So this is the new year…