Waiting for a Plot Twist in My Life

I was recently alerted to the fact that this month is not only the last month of the year, but the last month of the DECADE. My husband always thought it was silly to make a fuss about this kind of milestone, with people either celebrating or agonizing over turning 30, 40, 50. . . He said this was just our cultural fetish for base 10 math. But I enjoy using such milestones as an occasion for reflection.

One post I saw about the impending end of the year/decade was particularly striking to me: "May the last month of your 2019 be the plot twist you have been waiting for."

Ooh!

Instantly I decided to take this not as a friendly wish, but as an actual prediction. My plot twist is coming! My plot twist is coming! What will it be? When will it be? I started checking my email even more obsessively than I usually do, thinking that perhaps email would be the mechanism by which the universe would notify me of my plot twist. I returned to my old vice of Sudoku on my I-pad to pass the dull, dreary time until the plot twist would upend my entire life in some spectacular way.

But then I had two sobering realizations.

First, most plot twists don't happen as the heroine of the story is lying on the couch doing Sudoku puzzles or frantically checking her email every two or three minutes. (It's a sign of the unreality of contemporary fiction that characters are NOT shown spending three or four or five hours a day staring at their devices.) Plot twists happen, not as she is passively waiting with her hands folded, but when she is out and about engaged in the ongoing business of LIVING.

Second, and more disturbing, I'm not just a CHARACTER in the story of my own life; I'm also its AUTHOR. If there's going to be a plot twist in my story, it may be up to me to make this happen. And of course, I haven't even factored in the consideration that not all plot twists are good ones, moving the story to a happy ending.

Sigh.

So I now have half a month left in this year, and this decade. If I'm going to have a plot twist between now and New Year's Eve, I have to think hard about what I want it to be and then think hard about what I'd have to do to cause it to be. (Though I would appreciate some cooperation on the part of the universe here. Come on, universe! Let's work together on this one!)

In any case, I'm wishing for this last month of 2019 to bring the plot twist you've been hoping for, too.