Rarely do they come true.

That said, however, I’d like to offer

My New Year’s wish for you.

May your family stay healthy.

May all members be safe and sound.

May your gatherings bring joy and peace

With glad tidings all around.

May your food choices be yummy.

May you enjoy good health.

May you experience prosperity

And, whenever possible, great wealth.

May you worship as you wish.

May your prayers be answered each night.

May your kids go to sleep,

For once, without a fight.

May you reach as far as you can

In this brand-spanking new year.

May you keep your sense of humor

And all-around good cheer.

Finally, may you be the person

You’ve always wanted to be.

And know that whatever that looks like

It’s pretty much okay with me.

Happy New Year!

I’d go in, wake Sis up, and get her on board the crazy train. Sometimes, though, it was vice versa, as she’d wake me up by tackling me in bed mid-REM sleep at I-dunno-what-time-in-the-morning.

Such a sweet girl!

Anyhoo, we’d tip-toe past Mom and Dad’s room and go down the stairs to the tree, where whatever Santa was bringing had been brought. Soon Mom and Dad would be up – 5 a.m. on a day off for God’s sake – smiling in spite of their obvious bleary-eyed haze.

There, we’d find treasures.

The dollhouse that Mom and Dad built for us in the garage … in November … with a portable heater … out of scrap wood (which, if I remember correctly, resulted in my father contracting pneumonia) … the Barbie camper that fueled so many afternoons in the back yard with Lynn playing TravelBarbie and spawned Mousie and the Dogettes … Melissa’s Truman book, which she is holding up in the funniest picture I have of her (besides the one with the inflated dinosaur on her head in the driveway … I mean, you’d think she drank at 13 or something).

This, of course, says nothing for the traditional stocking stuffers of socks, body lotion, body sprays and gels, sunflower seeds (or pistachio nuts, depending on the recipient) …  and always an ornament for the tree – seriously, every year – from our grandmother, one for each cousin. Every. Single. Year.

We – the people in my life, me in my life – have been blessed. We’ve been blessed with prosperity, luck and the opportunity to work hard. Some of us are in good places now, some of us are challenged. Some of us have everything we want, while some of us are simply trying to fix as much as we can and stay in the moment.

Which is why “non-shopping days ’til Christmas” is a far more interesting metric.

What’s important is celebrating these memories. They aren’t over-the-top – hell, they made the dollhouse out of wood, which Dad had saved for no apparent reason (no shock, likely using screws and nails from some old air conditioner that he took apart).

For the record, the dollhouse is an A-frame stored in Mom and Dad’s garage up against a wall and the ceiling, where mice and random other … things … can’t get to it. It stands about three feet high and, because Dad planned it, built to withstand a nuclear meltdown.

Despite the soft real estate market, its valuation has remained constant. And, for that matter, with regard to that property, so, too, has mine.

Nah, we don’t, so the fact that I don’t know what’s going to happen next is probably not a newsflash. I’m sure something will happen, though, something good – either Santa will bring me a full-time job or new clients. I mean droughts don’t last forever.

They can’t. Sooner or later it rains, as it’s doing in buckets tonight.

As I like to say in my life, when it rains it pours, and when the sun comes out, I get blisters.

Usually when I try to make something happen, it leads to an embarrassment of riches. I end up with three offers, or six new clients, or having lost three extra pounds without thinking.

It’s been tougher in recent years. Much tougher.

That said, I’m sensing a change – a change the likes of which we haven’t seen in a while. A change that, as we decorate and look toward the holidays, will be life-altering.

So a new timeline. I read that concept somewhere and thought it interesting and apropos. I once thought I’d be an investigative reporter by the time I was 25, so I’ve been through these shifts. They aren’t easy. It’s like Minnie Driver’s character in (my favorite) John Cusack’s Grosse Point Blank says … sometimes we need (and I’m spelling this phonetically) a shocka-boo-coo, or a good swift kick in the head.

My feeling: I’ve had mine. I get it. Take nothing for granted. Value every moment you’re productive and given the chance to apply your skills to something positive.

And then go watch a rerun of Northern Exposure. The one with the moose. (They all have the moose. It’s the only way to celebrate the holidays.)

Talk to ya soon.

JK

I’ll never get over it.

—–

Tomorrow morning, I will engage in what has become an annual ritual: Watching news coverage of the attacks of September 11, 2001 as it played out in real-time. Morbid, maybe, but I think it’s my way of trying to understand the sheer magnitude of this event, which even now – nine years later – remains a mystery to me.

My most vivid memory was the stunned silence that fell over the country, the way we all stopped in our tracks – literally – in a bizarre, semi-silent panic. Once it happened, it seemed, there was nothing to do but wait – for what, we weren’t sure. Direction? Information? A second wave of attacks?

I was living in Virginia at the time and, along with several of my team members at work, had been laid off two weeks earlier. Bored with no where to go, I remember waking up before the sun that day, hitting the gym, then watching CNN to get the morning’s news.

And then I remember the slow, surreptitious crawl of change creeping across the screen – change in our culture, change in news, change in our perception that, somehow, we’re safe at home.

Having checked on family members, secure in their safety, there was little else to do but wait and watch everything play out – the iconic scenes of the President in Florida hearing the news amongst school children at an event, the Mayor of New York walking through the streets wearing a facemask, the flag hanging from the side of the Pentagon near the site of that plane’s crash.

Later, while living in Weehawken, NJ, I joined the locals there to pay respects and watch across the Hudson as the beams of light that mark the site of the World Trade Center came alive each year. Many of them had been there that day. The gatherings on those nights were mini-reunions, neighbors who move among each other on a day-to-day basis taking the time to stop and remember the horrific sight that once filled their front windows and the fear of being so close.

For me, though, the remembering begins every year with that news footage – live coverage of what is arguably this era’s most significant cultural event; I still find it inexplicable.

After that, though, I’ll probably go to the beach and, like everyone else, do the things that make living in this country and being of this country great.

Columbia. April 12, 1981. Four days after my 10^th birthday. That’s the kind of obsession it was.

I have every article in a 10-part series that The Philadelphia Inquirer did about the program leading up to that launch. In hard copy, cut out, pasted into a scrapbook and stashed in a drawer in my childhood bedroom. Still.

Now, of course, the shuttle is orbiting the Earth for the last time. And though the big dreams attached to the vehicle – it being a “workhorse” and taking people into space each and every week – never came about, I’m struck by how sentimental it was for me watching it blast off for the last time.

It was huge, and I felt connected.

Like many, I’m sure, I remember where I was on Jan. 28, 1986 – biology class at Indian Crest Junior High School in Souderton, PA – when someone announced over the loud speaker that Challenger had disintegrated. On board: A teacher and several very smart, well-educated, vital humans whose names I was able to recite for years after the event.

I remember the faces of the Columbia crew that perished in 2003 and being glued to the television for hours on end, truly saddened and worried we would never go back up.

I remember our return to space two years later – the first female commander, Eileen Collins, at the helm, a graduate of my alma mater, Syracuse University, flying Discovery (STS 114). I remember thinking we were back.

So it was with warmth and happiness that I read of the Google Science Fair and some young girls’ (ages 13 to 18) research into asthma, cancer and brain-controlled prosthetics.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1766596/google-science-fair-girls?partner=technology_newsletter

You rock, girls.

The greatest accomplishments that I can claim in my school science fairs were demonstrating the concept of viscosity in baby-food jars filled with different liquids and building a model of the Wright Brothers’ plane out of balsa wood. Noble efforts, mind you, of which I’m proud to this day – but not exactly a cure for cancer.

As for me and my space aspirations … well, along came junior year in high school and a Physics class that, to this day, I believe I passed because I played a good third base. (No offense to the teacher, but I really didn’t know what I was doing. On the baseball field, well, that was another story … I did.)

So much for the space dream.

Instead I can type 80+ wpm without looking and write the hell out of just about anything. For this I am thankful.

But if someone came to me tomorrow and said “we need a writer / blogger / whatever on the next STS flight and we want you to go” … don’t get in my way. ‘Cause, baby, I am so going up.

—

Updated 7 p.m. ET: Check out http://www.abc.com and World News with Diane Sawyer for more on the Google fair.

(As a Phillies fan, I doubt he’ll need the playoff tickets, but if he does, I’ll find a way to be his new BFF. I digress.)

Now, as I read this morning, companies are lining up to pay the taxes on the gift that’s been bestowed upon this man. (http://www.businessinsider.com/miller-pay-christian-lopez-taxes-yankees-tickets-2011-7?utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Business%20Insider%20Select&utm_campaign=BI_Select_071311)

Big-brand PR opps aside, the truth is that kindness pays. I know it for a fact. I’ll channel Sophia from The Golden Girls here, if you’ll permit me.

Picture it: Indian Valley Library … a small town, Telford, PA. A young high school English / journalism major is browsing the fiction aisles when she comes across a book that interests her. (This would be so much cooler if I remembered the title, but alas.) She reads the front flap of the book, which continues on the back and then … as she turns to the back of the book to read the end of the description ….

$100 cash falls out. It wasn’t $250,000, mind you, but to a high school kid, it was a lot.

I did what normal, ethical people would do – I turned it in to the librarian and checked out the book.

Turns out it was someone’s Christmas money and was later safely returned to its rightful owner. (Who, as it turns out, was in my high school class and whom I’d later work with at our school newspaper.)

I have a vague recollection of some sort of reward – I can’t recall, to be honest. I think it was from the library, itself. It wasn’t why I did it then.

And I’m sure that’s not why this guy did what he did.

As the article said, he may have made a windfall if he’d sold the ball. But I believe his motives were genuine in not doing so. And, as a result, I suspect that – with the right guidance and coaching – he could be in for far more appreciation and encouragement – whether from fans, the team or the greater sports world, in the form of endorsements and / or media coverage.

Kindness pays. I know it for a fact.

The economy is terrible. The world is changing. And if you listen to all the people around me, you’d think the world sucked.

Well, it does. But here’s the thing. It doesn’t have to.

I don’t care about the economy. I care about MY economy.

I don’t give a damn about Casey Anthony except to say the daughter is gorgeous and what the hell was going through your mind, you freak show moron?

I don’t give a damn about Wimbledon this year. I usually watch, but not this year.

I’ve written a novel. (Hilarious to most, I realize.) Today I finished writing it. I need an agent. Leads are welcome.

It’s a workday in the summer in New York. It’s good.

And I will win.

Bored as I was with the practice, I stayed interested when I started competing against one of my best friends – I’ll call her Sarah (not her real name). Day after day, we watched each other – Sarah meticulously crafting each letter and focusing on quality, while I sped through and focused solely on speed.

Finish first I did. The end result, however, was decidedly sub-par. While Sarah’s assignments were suitable for framing, mine resembled the rambling hieroglyphics of an over-caffeinated Egyptian,  requiring nothing short of a PhD to translate. (“Uh … yes, Doctor, it does in fact appear to be the English language … but barring further evidence, it’s hard to say …)

To this day, her handwriting is beautiful – and mine is a beautiful mess. The good news is that we’re very close friends – that and the fact that most, if not all, of our correspondence these days is via e-mail or phone, where my scribble is undetectable and she can actually read (or hear) what I’m trying to say.

That said, I couldn’t help but feel a familiar pang when I read this column in Fortune today on why comparing yourself to others can prove to be career suicide:

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/20/why-chronic-comparing-spells-career-poison/

The writer’s point is one that I would have done well to take back in second grade: Don’t compare yourself to other people – in life or in your career – particularly in this economy. In most cases, there are forces larger than you at work. You are where you are for a reason – some people are better at certain things, some worse. The trick is to work from the inside out.

I was in that chair learning how to write in cursive so that when I would sign my name as my 40-year-old self there would be more to my signature than two capital letters and a couple of long, drawn out lines. That didn’t happen … but I can say that I finished my handwriting lessons before everyone else did.

And that and $1.50 might get you a cup of coffee. (Well, then again …)

Lucky for me the tech era came about, so I contend almost exclusively with keyboards. I type almost 80 words a minute – without looking, so practiced these days (thanks to years as a journalist) that my hands feel like they belong to someone else while they fly across the keypad – thus begging the question: Sarah, perhaps there should be a rematch? We’ll call it “Cursive … for the Digital Era.” Yeah, that’s it.

Dear Friend, you’re so going down …