Out With the In

It's 2012. All who expected we would have jet packs and flying cars by now, please raise your hand.

Other bloggers () have written about the New Year and resolutions and all of the usual writerly angles for blog posts on the first (or second) day of a new annum. Which means I either have to repeat what they've written (with my own spin, of course) or I have to work extra hard to Robert Frost a blog post.

(Two paths diverged in the woods...get it? No? Okay. I'll wait. Sometimes my lame jokes need a few minutes to marinate.)

(Still nothing?)

(I see you're nodding your head. You've got it now. Payoff wasn't worth it, but thanks for playing along.)

Anyway, what's a blogger to do?

Guess I'll take the hard way. Try to find something new and fresh to say in the new and fresh year. But what?

I could try something like predictions, but I have a horrible record as a prognosticator - or at least my investments tell me so. I could try a year-in-review kind of thing, but honestly, who wants that? We just left 2011 behind; no need to bring it back up like some horrible ex-significant other. , but I don't have a better idea than that one.

So what to write?

Maybe I should write something outrageous, something completely over the top and ridiculous, something so Fox News that everyone will talk about it and comment on it and CNN will do an immediate opinion poll on whether or not I should be executed at dawn by dispeptic pit bulls. I remember telling me that the best way to get readers is to stir the pot a bit.

But I suck at pot stirring. Every time I try it, I drive readers away.

Maybe I'll just fritter away 800 words or so and see how long people will stick with me. I remember someone once saying something about Mark Twain being so talented that people would read the phone book if his name were on the cover. Or maybe that was Suzanne Collins.

But I'm not Mark Twain. Or Suzanne Collins.

I guess I should just stick with what I'm good at - looking at life and offering my meager reflections on it. I was hoping to come up with some grand writing goal for 2012 - something impressive that would make people stand up and take notice - but honestly, after recharging my battery with friends and family the past couple of weeks, I can't think of anything better to write about. Over the holidays I was reminded of just how much of my life is bound up in the lives of other people.

Like my friend Brad Dillard, who welcomed his first child, a son - Braden Daniel Dillard (7 lbs., 5 oz. and 20.75 inches long) - into the world yesterday afternoon at 4:47 PM. First New Year's baby I've ever known. Braden was brought into the world by the valiant and brave efforts of his mother, Meredith Dillard, who by all reports was a trooper. Meredith and Brad are special people to me, and they deserve all the happiness in the world, especially the kind that wears diapers and poops on your hardwood floors (wait; that's my son...), and isn't that better to write about than anything else?

Don't we need more good news?

So maybe instead of trying to find a gimmick, I'll just do what I've always done: tell you simple stories that hopefully make you laugh or cry or feel something in a good, positive way. Instead of giving in to the cynicism that seems to be so "chic", so "in" these days, I'll go against the grain and write about the things that make life good.

Like newborns, and new years, and new hope for what's ahead.

Out with the in. In with the out.

Here's to a good 2012.