Soundtrack in my head: Let’s Active, “In Little Ways”

In the last few years, I’ve often found myself anticipating New Year’s Eve with mixed feelings. I’ve recently realized that I’m not necessarily excited about going to a New Year’s Eve celebration, but not wanting to be home alone during that time either.

I remember a rather strange New Year’s a few years ago where a friend of mine invited me to go with her to her grandparents for New Year’s. The idea didn’t appeal to me, but she said to me kind of sternly, “You know, it’s an honor to be invited.” We were sort of dating but not really, so I thought that perhaps this signified a new development in our relationship. But I found myself ticked off when she dropped me off at home at 10 p.m.—I’d set aside other plans for her and yet it seemed to me the point of New Year’s Eve was celebrating at midnight. I managed to find my way to another party, anyway.

Complicating this New Year’s was the fact that I recently declared myself to be a Baha'i and Baha’is are prohibited from consuming alcohol. That hadn’t been much of a stretch for me--I’d been drinking less and less over the last few years anyway. I don’t mind being around people who are drinking, but I do kind of mind being around people drinking themselves stupid. As my father has often said, one might consider New Year’s Eve to be “Amateur Night.” U.S. Bank Eve didn’t appeal to me either—perhaps it would if I had children of my own.

So when I heard that there was a gathering of Baha’is in Sun Prairie on New Year’s Eve, I jumped at the chance. I knew it wasn’t going to be something that would go until midnight, but I found myself not being bothered by that this time around.

Physically, I felt weird all throughout that day of December 31^st. I woke up that morning with a headache and feeling very dehydrated. That entire day, I consumed probably five liters of water, and yet I still found myself deathly thirsty, and I know that dehydration gives me headaches. At the party, my headache got worse and worse and I felt like I was getting a hangover without the pleasure of drinking, which seemed grossly unfair to me. Perhaps I was making up for numerous hangover-free New Year’s Eves in the past.

Nevertheless I had a good time. I met some new Baha'is and got to know some others better. We had a rather raucous and somewhat competitive game of “Guillotine.”

Because I felt like I was getting the equivalent of a hangover before midnight, I really did not mind being dropped off at home right before 11 p.m. I saw one housemate who was about to go out with some friends. Another housemate was going to meet yet another housemate at the Great Dane to watch The Hometown Sweethearts perform. I know that I could have come along if I wanted to, but the last thing I wanted to do was be in a noisy, crowded bar. Two more housemates were staying in and watching a movie.

I was really feeling out of it so I laid down on my bed for awhile, figuring that I would get up in a few minutes and find some way to countdown the seconds to midnight. My nap felt feverish and semi-delirious, and I lifted my head after what I thought was a few minutes—only to find that my clock read 12:08 a.m.

Okay, so now it was 2008. Somehow it didn’t really bother me that I missed the countdown. After a few minutes I went back downstairs and was surprised to find that the housemate who was going to go out with her friends was already back. She said that her friends wanted to go out to the bars, and she didn’t, so she headed back. She said that there were a lot of drunk people out on the street and a lot of people slipping on the sidewalks. I could only imagine what the roads must have been like.

I saw my housemates who had been watching their movie, and they said that they really didn’t do any countdown either—they just noticed that the clock had passed midnight, and like me acknowledged the new year.

I won’t rule out going to New Year’s Eve parties again, but it was a nice change of pace to kick back and relax a little bit. One New Year’s Eve resolution for 2008 will be a commitment to do whatever the heck I feel like doing on the night of December 31, 2008.