April Winchell

Usually, I’m a little depressed this time of year.

It’s not one particular thing that does it; it’s more a mish-mash of miseries, bubbling away in a crockpot of hormones. Christmas is over, another year is swirling down the toilet, I can’t zip up my pants and the anniversary of my birth looms like April 15th at Wesley Snipe’s house.

Historically, this perfect storm of disappointment and regret has led to a general sadness at year’s end, punctuated only by bouts of crankiness and unexplained tears. So really, it’s a little like watching another Ben Stiller movie.

This year however, things are different. I’m pretty happy, all things considered, and cautiously optimistic about the year ahead.

A lot of this has to do with the obvious blessings, like the web site someone sent to me this morning that shows how to make the Times-Square style ball pictured in this post. It’s made of Christmas lights and tampons, which would make anyone feel good.

But there are a few other things at work this year, both professional and personal, that have me feeling like the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train.

Professionally, two really good opportunities have opened up for me. The first is the TV show I told you about a while back; a kind of Daily Show comedy newscast that was picked up by . . . Fox News. Go figure.

We’ll be shooting two episodes in mid-January, and I’m hoping to be in both. It sounds like the ratings Fox wants to see in order to pick up a full season are pretty realistic, and seeing as this show will undoubtedly have a lot of buzz going in, I think it has a real shot.

The other opportunity is an HBO project which sounds almost too good to be true. I can’t say much about it because I don’t know if I’m allowed to yet, but I will say that it is web-based, and a really good use of my particular set of talents (whatever those may be). We’ll be taping on the 9th, and if this works it will be a great, great thing for me.

On the personal front, I find myself having a very different December than I usually do. For one thing, I’m feeling almost philosophical about getting older on January 4th, which is not something I generally do. I don’t go gentle into that good cake.

Aging is hard for most women, but it’s almost cataclysmic for me. I don’t handle it well at all.

Every candle is another indictment of my failure. I beat myself up for all I haven’t accomplished yet, and all the things it’s too late to do. I focus on all I don’t have and how I’ve disappointed myself and squandered my professional and physical potential.

Part of that has to do with being such a late bloomer in so many respects. Hell, I just lost my baby fat 3 years ago. And I didn’t find someone I’d consider having kids with until it was too late to have them. I haven’t exactly been on the fast track here.

But honestly, I never thought this would happen. I never thought I’d be here, watching possibility getting smaller in the rear view mirror. I’ve always been the kind of person who looks at the clock and says, “I still have time.”

And for many years, you do.

And then one day, you don’t.

But this year I don’t feel any of that. I feel, well, okay. I have some optimism, some faith, and the kind of “whatever” mentality usually reserved for the very stoned.

Maybe I’ve just finally figured out that not peaking in high school is a blessing. Had I achieved everything I think I should have achieved by now, I’d have nothing to look forward to. And one of the great ironies of the way I’ve lived my life is that as I get older, everything is new.

Sometimes I read blogs on MySpace written by much younger people, and I’m struck by how sure they are that life can’t touch them.

I suppose that’s part and parcel of being young, but still, I wonder how it’s possible that they can be so oblivious. So many of them seem convinced that life is over and people stop having value after a certain age, and I don’t know how they can’t see that they’re talking about themselves.

Sometimes, I want to email them.

“Hey, jagoff, this is you in a few years. You won’t be able to eat popcorn anymore because the husks will get stuck in your bridgework. You’ll see yourself on a surveillance camera at the liquor store and you’ll wonder who the bald guy is. Your supervisor will be younger than you. Suddenly you’ll understand how poignant and human your need is to be taken seriously at any age. You didn’t ask for this to happen. In fact you never thought it would.”

But I can’t do that, because then I’d sound like one of those really old people we all hate.