Top o’ the morning, all. Very thankful to finally be in the New Year. A blank slate, to this point, and although it’s impossible to see what lies ahead, I am more than ready to leave 2020 behind. Of course, there are some of last year’s issues that still need to be addressed. I feel like we all will be wearing masks for quite some time, for example, and for the next few days and weeks we’ll be learning legal definitions for terms like seditious conspiracy and treason, while watching the darkening comedy on the daily news. In front of every silver lining there’s a big, black cloud, amirite?

Still, there’s an inherent optimism baked into the idea of a New Year. Like anything can happen. Even if some years are far more pain than pleasure, we can’t feel any of that just yet. This year really is tabula rasa, filled with chances and choices for each of us, individually, as well as for the entire society. It will be interesting to see what happens, which choices win out; we don’t have a particularly good track record.

Right now, for me, I’m choosing to get out on the water.