At least I can still see my feet.

Most people I know, if they make resolutions, do so on New Years Eve. They promise to change something, do something or be something other than what they are at that moment. Maybe they think something magical will happen as that clock strikes midnight and they receive the first kiss of the New Year. I sometimes think that way too, and I’ve been known to jump on the magical bus here and there. I certainly did this year.

But that magic wears off. Sometimes it only takes a week.

Sometimes it takes six.

Inevitably though they seem to fade.

The promises I made on Freemont Street or those I professed under the fireworks don’t seem to stand the test of time.

I prefer to use my birthday as a time for change.

I turned thirty-one today.

As I do every year, I looked backwards.

Five years. Skip that. Nothing good happened that year.

Ten years.

Ten years ago I thought I had the whole world figured out. I was twenty-one. Just one year left in obtaining my bachelors degree in unemployment, only three months from getting married.

I had a five year plan. I had a ten year plan.

None of it came true. It was a good plan. But life got in the way.

In one way I’m in exactly the same place.

A year from finishing school. However nowhere near being married. In fact I wonder if that’s something I’ll ever be willing to do again.

And a plan?

Nothing like it.

Instead I see my next year as nothing but transitions.

My life is one of those pictures they used to sell at the mall. The ones that you were supposed to stare at, but not at one fixed point, until an image appeared in the indistinguishable pattern. The sales people would tell us to look at our reflections in the glass, not at the pattern.

My friends could see them.

They would stand there, exclaim “It’s a dolphin!” or “I can see three clowns with pointy teeth waiting to eat you!”

All I ever got from them was a massive migraine.

Same thing happens now when I look past April 2011.

Massive Migraine.

Only now, there’s no one standing next to me telling me what that picture really shows.

Someone should say “It’s Austin!” or “Look, I can see Madison in your future”.

I think I’ll just stop looking and stare at my feet like I did back then.

No headache and they always seemed to know where to take me next.