What are you Doing New Year's Eve?

I like New Year's Eve, even though I understand why many people don't. 

Most celebrations are outdoors in the cold, and the night involves hours of standing around waiting on a 10-second countdown.  The bars and restaurants that beg for your business every other day of the year suddenly charge exhorbitant prices just to enter throught their doors tonight.

If you choose not to venture outside, your viewing options are limited to the same Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years show they play every year, complete with Clark's incoherent countdown and lip synched performances by B-level celebrities. 

And if you don't live in the Eastern Time Zone, the countdown for your time zone might not even get rebroadcast at midnight.

That's what's wrong with New Year's Eve. 

But I like it anyway.

I like it because most everyone is off today and gets at least a few hours to think about what they accomplished this year, where they failed, and what they learned about themselves in the process.  It's a day to think about what we want our lives to look like at this time next year. 

We spend so much time trying to accomplish our lives' to-do list that we don't often get the chance to think about whether the things on that list should even be there in the first place. 

Today provides a chance to do that.  During the day, we can think about what we want our lives to look like and to figure out how to make that reality.

At nighttime, we can celebrate that all the crap from the past year is about to be behind us. 

For that, enduring an evening of Dick Clark's Horrible New Year's Eve show is a small price to pay.