An Auspicious Beginning?

It’s 2013 – a brand new year, offering the promise of endless new possibilities, a chance to start fresh, to learn and grow, and to make tomorrow different from yesterday!
As if.
I actually went ahead and set the tone for the year very early on.
At around 1 AM on my way upstairs I decided to pause to check my phone to see if I’d gotten any texts (No), and after I set the phone back down on its wireless charger, I turned to head up the stairs, and in the process – as I’ve done so many times – I caught my pant leg on the corner of one of the metal dividers separating the vinyl flooring from the carpet by the front door.  Despite my best efforts, the dividers will not stay put, as whoever installed them didn’t really take adequate steps to secure them to the concrete underneath and the – bent – nails holding them in place keep popping loose.
This time was worse than any of the others, however, as I got quite a bit further than usual before realizing that my pant leg was caught, and so the divider got yanked almost completely loose, and ended up even more bent than it already was.  I’d heard one of the nails get sent skittering across the vinyl, so, after getting my pant leg loose, I reached over to turn on the light switch, at which point the bulb in the lamp flared brilliantly for the briefest of moments, then burned out with a loud pop.
I stood there in the dark, not wanting to take a step because I knew that if I did my foot would, unerringly and without fail, find the missing nail, and I thought, “Yep, a brand new year, full of endless possibilities.”