Eric says we're only getting half the story. He claims that, while it's true that no critical systems appear to have gone down, we won't know the full extent of things until businesses start reopening after the holiday. It's important to keep things in perspective; nothing is either pure black or pure white. The Millennial Celebration is not necessarily Goldenly Good just because it's not Catastrophically Bad.

Sometimes it's hard for me to see that truth. The optimist in me tends to want to dive headlong into new hobbies or major life changes, simply because with so much good staring me in the face, I tend to completely overlook any bad. When Eric and I found our current apartment, I was ready to sign a lease from the moment we put foot over the threshold; it was beautiful, our old apartment was not, so what was the problem? Now that we're trying to save money for a new family member, I can see that we probably should have continued looking for something more affordable.

The perfectionist who also resides in me will, more often than not, completely abandon projects which have developed problem areas or tricky spots, due to the eclipsing of the positive by the negative. The last movement (well, the middle movement, which I finished last) of my thesis was like that. I was working on a bridge section, trying to piece two parts of it together, and it just wouldn't go, no matter what I tried. For the longest time, I had to actually force myself to sit down in front of it; I couldn't bear to look at it. There was no "grey" about it, no matter how good the other parts of the movement were. I hated the whole piece.

It's hard for me to be very positive right now. Two of the women on my preconception list who had finally conceived are both bleeding, and may be miscarrying, as we speak. How do you stay positive around such news as that? I'm trying everything in my power to become a mother, and then I listen to stories of babies dying before they have the chance to draw their first breath. Where's the grey area? Where are the mediating positives?

Some people are cheering their way into a new year. Some people are mourning loved ones that can't enter the new millennium by their sides. Fireworks, champagne, tears, blood. Kissing in the streets, or embracing in a darkened hospital room.

I'm struggling to keep my perspective here. I know it's not either one or the other, either glittering cacophony or utter catastrophe. When I conceive my first child, there is a very good chance that I will carry her to term, but there's also a chance that I won't. I can't live my life, though, by calculating odds. There's always a possibility for good within bad, and likewise for bad within good. It's the remembering of this that makes the trying worthwhile.