Lucky Day

Friday the 13th always seems to be a lucky day for me. Of course, I was born on a Friday the 13th, so can I get any more self-absorbed than launching this website — a personal venue for my reporting and writing — than thinly veiling my contrarianism and how much I enjoy a day so mired in negative superstition? Regardless, I can't deny how much I enjoy the sound of the rain scattering across the broad leaves of the banana trees outside my window. It is incredibly comforting. A reminder on this day, when the U.S. House of Representatives took steps to at least appear to combat this historical moment so poorly underdescribed as an "economic crisis," that I am fortunate to have a place to live, to shelter myself from the rain drops, to savor, not dread, their sound.

I have the choice to be dry. The choice to be wet.

I really still can choose.

I imagine I'll be writing a lot about choices in the coming months. About the choices I make. About the choices others make. About the choices that have been taken, those that could be taken, and those that have been avoided and postponed. But I think about choices often, and my opportunity to make them. It's not because I'm taking a course in institutional decision-making — although I'm sure the subject influences my thoughts here.

Rather, I just think about my recent reporting, about the unique position in which so many of us still find ourselves. This is our moment to choose. We can choose to live life as we have, to return to the way things have been, to struggle and claw against time, or we can choose to live differently, to stop fighting the current and instead, to be carried along, to let the world unfold before us. We are where we are, and we will be where we will be. Shouldn't we accept that? Or is that easy for me to say, not facing the worst of these times?