I originally promised myself I wouldn’t go here.  But if you can’t be perfectly honest with yourself, who can you be perfectly honest with?

A few entries back, I said that the time between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day was the hardest and most miserable time of year for single people.  I’m amending that.  Yes, the entire time of year is difficult, but it all really zeroes in on one single day that’s the worst.  Thanksgiving and Christmas, they’re more for family and you can spend it with relatives.  Valentine’s Day, you can conveniently ignore if you’re single since it’s not like you have absolutely nothing to do that day because everything’s not closed and it’s not like there are all-day marathons about love running on every single TV channel known to man, and if it falls on a weekday, you’re probably distracted by work all day anyways.  Hell, I have even have plans for my birthday (which is next Wednesday, by the way) and I usually never have birthday plans because everyone’s usually already left to spend the holidays with their relatives.  No, the single worst day of the year to be single is December 31.

New Year’s Eve is the one day that’s a celebration you spend with friends or a significant other (or both), not relatives.  And now that I’m getting to the age where most of my friends are attached, I’m finding it’s almost harder when they make plans and are nice enough to include me because, quite frankly, I don’t like feeling like an odd-numbered wheel.  The big tradition is the midnight kiss, which you don’t get to partake in if you’re single.  And again, it’s not a day where you can distract yourself with other things — almost every channel is running some kind of New Year’s celebration, you’ll hear the cheering and the party horns blowing at midnight, and just about everything’s closed because it’s pretty much a national holiday.  You.  Can’t.  Avoid it.

I don’t know where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing (if anything) this New Year’s Eve.  At this point, I’m just trying to take it one day at a time.  And right now, that means I’m counting down until this weekend, when I head to Las Vegas to celebrate my birthday with my best friend, who I haven’t seen in five months and who I miss like you wouldn’t believe.  I’m even booked for Christmas Eve and double-booked for Christmas Day to do the Jewish tradition of movies & Chinese food with my friends.  After that, it’s anyone’s guess.