Back in the 1990s, New Year’s Eve was my favorite time to be an office worker in San Francisco’s Financial District. At the end of the last workday of the year, office trolls like me would gleefully fling the sheets of our desktop calendars out windows, off balconies, and in the air as we left The Office on the final workday of the year.

There was always a huge smile on my face as I biked home and rolled over the littered pages. Crappy boring workdays were now blowing in the wind, just another piece of trash that would get swept up by a street sweeper. As I headed home, I would think to myself, “next year’s gonna be different . . .” I was going make some real changes in my life, do the things I always wanted to do, and go places I always said I would visit.

But as the new year went on, I would fall back into the same routine as before. Work. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

Then, in 2007, real change happened to both Jim and I, when we sold the farm and hit the road. We were finally doing the things we always said we would do.

Yet, even last New Year’s Eve when we were in Florida, I wasn’t certain if that New Year’s Eve would be our last one on the road or not. In the back of my head, I thought there was a chance we would end our road trip as planned, settle down somewhere, and slip back into the routines of domestic life.

Wrong!

We will not be “settling” anytime soon. We love this lifestyle, and will keep our wheels turning wherever the wind blows us, for the foreseeable future.

On this New Year’s Eve, 12/31/08, I can honestly say that next year will be just as wildly different, unpredictable, and spontaneous as the year before. And I’m betting that by mid-year, much of what I expected would happen, won’t. And things I never imagined possible, will suddenly be within reach.

This is the biggest reward I get out of living like a gypsy. If I fully embrace this unpredictable lifestyle with flexibility and a good sense of humor, our year will always be more exciting and enjoyable than I ever dreamed of, during those days long ago when I left The Office on the last day of the year.

Finally, I’m getting to experience the kind of real change that I’ve always wanted in a new year.

Happy New Year everyone! May 2009 be full of joy and happy surprises for you.