This year, unlike most NYE, I wasn’t slinging drinks, just minding the door and capacity, checking IDs, and clearing tables. A buddy asked me if I was a “New Year’s” kinda guy. I replied, ultimately, with not really.
I don’t set “goals” for the upcoming year; lately I’ve just been trying to be better than I was the day before. It’s cheesy, I know (and said friend told me so).
That being said: I do enjoy New Year’s eve. Not because it’s the “BEST night of our life!!!!” or any of that shit. The last New Year’s Eve I remember that I wasn’t working was 1999/2000, which I guess is understandable. (Coincidentally, I started working in the service industry in 2001).
I like the last night of the year because everyone else loves it. As a casual - admittedly paid - observer, I’ve seen the absolute best kinds of people in so many ways. A man buying a round for a group of strangers. The drunkest hugs between people that really don’t know each other that well. Friends that offer to ferry people around to make sure that they don’t become another statistic on the highway. Drunk men I pass while I walk home that say “Hey - Happy New Year, man”.
Something about the significance of the passing of time makes everyone hopeful, I guess. Open to the possibility of a new friend. Or just accruing some form of annual karma - just in case.
Maybe we have to look in the cracks in the mortar to see the best parts of a good night out.