So this is the new year... and I don't feel any different.

Oh to be truly emo... Then my title would be the greatest. The truth is that the title is a load of crap. No really, I feel very different. I feel like 2007 was the year of panic mode, I was in a panic about anything and everything. I didn't breath for the months of May or December. The rest of the months, I was half breathing, like when you have a cold and its not really working.

It's amazing the power of unsubstantiated fear. Fear that you are for sure, without a doubt, on the chopping block at work, although it hasn't been said. Fear that you will die alone because thats what happens to women once they hit 25 and are single (according to the general public and your grandmother). Fear that you are on your own with out the training wheels for the first time and that if you fall, you will undoubtedly fall hard. What people forget about is that sometimes when you fall you get back up, dust yourself off, or maybe if you are lucky you might have someone unexpected who catches you.

I have some great friends and a terrific family. Yet I, like many, was consumed by the fear of failure and reluctant to take chances. Yesterday that changed. I completed a phone interview for a job that would send me to a different country, a country that I am familiar with and love, but still far away from my great friends and terrific family. The job is one I may be under-qualified for but I applied anyways. As I sat on the call, I felt like for once, I was doing something that could change my life. The last time I felt that way is when I left 4 years ago to embark interestingly enough on a study abroad program in the very country I was currently calling.

This country has been for most a land of poverty, starvation, and completely lacking opportunity. However, since the 1990s that has changed and those that left due to the hardships they faced are starting to come back. Not necessarily those same people, but their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren etc. Now I look at this country and I see nothing but opportunities. It is in some strange way the perfect metaphor for my life in transition from the old year to the new one.

This change in my outlook, is thanks predominantly to my good friend Kelli, who simply reached over and turned off the panic button. She did this through patient listening, a positive outlook, and a good example. She is one of the friends I have met in the last six years of my life that has truly made an impact. Not one that is obvious, she is anything but obvious, but the behind the scenes friend who scrapes you off the floor after a fall, dusts you off and then tells you to get back on the f'ing bike and keep rolling with the bumps. I don't think I have thanked her enough or for that matter, been the best friend I could be to her. Something I plan to change in the year ahead.

With 2007 out the door and 2008 starting off with a blank page, I hope that by the time I hit that quarter century of life mark in June, I can honestly say I have made a change for the better. Resolutions are meant to be broken, I do not plan on making any of those. I plan on opening my ears listening for once... Really listening, not the kind of listening you do when your boss is critiquing you or your parents are lecturing you. However, I do plan to listen to my critics more openly, the only way to truly know yourself is through how others see you.

P.S. Anyone catch Obama's victory speech from Iowa? Everyone is feeling the change...