What's in a year?

What exactly are we doing when we "celebrate" on New Year's Eve? Are we celebrating the end of a year? Are we celebrating the arrival of a new one? a fresh start? the hope that the coming year will bring bigger and better things than the last? the accomplishments of the closing year?

In my case, I think I simply hope that the new year will be less crazy than the one to which we bid farewell: worry, fear, cancerX2 (mom and dad), caregiving, chaos, chemo, crises, hospitals, surgeries, death, tragedy, stress, anxiety, new challenges, old challenges...it was a rollercoaster.

For the past few years, I wrote an 'end of the year' letter thinking that I would send it out to those of you who are near and dear to me along with Happy New Year wishes. Mom would proofread it for me and give me some feedback. And then I didn't do anything with it. I came across last year's...it was nice to reflect on 2006 and see how I had summarized the year. Right now I don't have it in me to summarize 2007. It was ridiculous.