Farewell To The Past, High Hopes For The Future

As I sit looking at the clock and the under twelve hours left in 2012, I'm struck at how much this has been a year of change for me, and just about everyone around me.  While change can be daunting, frightening, and unnerving, I welcome and embrace it and am very happy about the changes I've experienced in the last year.

It would be presumptuous and egotistical to go over every event of the year that's about to end.  Some of those recollections would take me to a very dark place, and others of them will only make me seem like a braggart.  Suffice it to say that I started the year unemployed, stayed that way for longer than I ever have, and was blessed with a truly incredible job opportunity in June.  I have a great feeling of professional satisfaction, inner peace, and much less stress than I have had in a very long time, and for all of that I am grateful.

I'm also grateful for my friends, the few dozen people who I can honestly call my REAL friends.  Those who have supported, encouraged, and comforted me in the bad times and celebrated with me in the good times.  I've learned who my true friends are and gained new respect for the value of friendship.  I can't begin to name all of these "Real Friends" individually, but I do hope you are reading this and you know who you are.  You've been my invaluable support network, seen me through some of the lowest points in my life, and given me strength to go on.   For that, I think you with every fiber of my being.  

I'm grateful for the opportunities that lie ahead.  Working with John Tesh in the new world of content creation and social media is perhaps the most exciting and challenging job I've had.  Leaving the radio industry after 37 years was difficult in some ways, but incredibly easy as I look at the future of content and media and see the changes in the business I've loved for as long as I can remember.  Being able to continue to raise my family in St. Louis is a blessing, and I don't know of a better place for my family to flourish.

For the first New Year's Eve in a very long time, I can honestly say that life is good.  I'll be sad for a moment at Midnight when Dick Clark isn't there to bring in another year, but I'll be happy, excited, and invigorated as I spend that moment with the people I love and think about the amazing things that await me and those who are important to me in 2013.

As the New Year approaches, I leave you with my very best wishes for a healthy, happy, prosperous 2013 and with these words:

A happy New Year! Grant that I 

May bring no tear to any eye

When this New Year in time shall end

Let it be said I've played the friend,

Have lived and loved and labored here,

And made of it a happy year.

~Edgar Guest

It Can Now Be Christmas

Forget the calendar, forget the weather outside, forget the lines at the stores.  It takes one thing for it to OFFICIALLY be Christmas for me.  Darlene Love singing "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" the iconic song from the 1963 LP "A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector".

Darlene love performs the song every year on The Late Show With David Letterman, and she did the song Friday night.  As usual, she NAILED it, something that was no easy task when she recorded it at the age of 22.  But she's 71 now, and she has all the fire and energy of any one of today's disposable pop divas.

In case you missed it, here's the video of the performance courtesy of CBS:

If you ask me, it simply doesn't get better than that.  But if you want to hear the original song in the glorious mono "Wall Of Sound" that Phil Spector created, here is is for your listening pleasure.

NOW it can be Christmas.  Merry Christmas and best wishes for a wonderful 2013 from all of me to all of you!

It's Almost Christmas

Posted via email from The Mark Edwards Lifestream