Select Entry-Tonia Denise Willis, Age 35

Welcome to our Optimistic Essay category. Here you will find the $1,000 winning contest essay, 5 finalist essays and 15 honorable mention essays and a growing list of hand-picked select essays that readers submitted during our "Why Are You Optimistic About the Future?" contest.

Every year I hope (not pray because I'm not religious, although I wish it were so because I really do guilt well) that the New Year will bring me a bountiful joyous and depression-free three hundred and sixty-five days (not counting Leap Year since nobody, with the exception of a few calendar Geeks, really knows or understands why and when it shows up anyway). If I am to be totally honest (if only just this once), I am not the most optimistic person. This revelation generally takes most who meet me by surprise because I smile a lot and love to laugh and give off an overwhelmingly happy go lucky impression (one I cannot afford let me tell you). I've come to rationalize that its okay for me to embody both pro and con emotions and that the only way I can see the brightness for the future is in exploring some of the bleakness that has come before. I shall begin.

I am a creative artist, at least that's what I call myself. In 2004 I had a one-act play entitled SYLLOGISM produced off-Broadway in NYC at a little theatre called The Theater Studio Inc. It was a non profit production and I didn't make a dime but it was one of the happiest days of my life. While I was virtually unemployed in Seattle and couldn't afford to make the trip to see the staging of a piece of work I had labored over for months, my mother who resides in NYC was able to attend and take a few relatives. Most of whom didn't even have a clue I could write something anybody professionally would be interested in. I think that was the day I started believing in myself, believing in my talent, that I would indeed persevere and it wasn't this daily aphorism I kept telling myself while crying in the mirror. I do a lot of crying in the mirror (we're still being honest here right?). While that big break still proves elusive and there are times when I resent all the people that are more successful than me (this occurs usually on bill days), I nevertheless, continue to write and fully believe that creativity generates its own rewards and that perhaps one day prosperity will get together with opportunity and come knocking on my door.

Moving on to new advancements in technology, where do I start? Wi-fi. Bluetooth. Convergence. VOIP. RSS. RFID. Clearly there must be an entire subdepartment within research and development at huge tech firms solely devoted to coming up with crafty titles and acronyms for the newest behemoth in protocols and processes. It is the expansion of the almighty Internet that rose from the early days of the government's ARPANET pilot project as a way of networking telecommunications with computing in the late 1960's, that has provided the world with entire new ways of sharing what's called a "critical mass" of intellectual information. Militarists and scientists working together to create something for the benevolence of society? Wow, what a novel idea! I like it. I firmly believe we have not even come close to the full extent of capabilities that this technology has to provide. With the explosion of the Internet came both the medium of digital arts(is it a medium or the "art" itself?) and interactive media which has not only gained its proper respect even among some of the purists but has succeeded in revolutionizing other industries like motion pictures animation and the recording and distribution of music.

Let us not forget that all of this remains a byproduct of the pervasiveness of the personal computing era we live in. I am eager to learn what's in store for us on the horizon as we look to the information superhighway and its various progeny of development. Speaking of which, "They can send a man to the Moon but I can't sell a lousy grilled cheese sandwich with a facial imprint of the Virgin Mary on eBay for $28,000." Actually, someone beat me to it. Darn! Online auctions and the people who can't live without them - a brilliant way of uniting the buyers and the sellers of the world in perfect (er, blind ignorance) harmony. Gotta love it!

Okay, what else is there to be happy about? Hey, I'm trying alright! It doesn't help that I just finished reading Ferdinand Celine's Death on the Installment Plan chronicling his miserable life growing up in the Parisian slums. I'd be really happy if there was some kind of national healthcare coverage, but I digress. Let's talk about the fourth estate. The press. It is a good thing to see the tremendous strides public journalism and citizen presses have made in the last decade. From homegrown news reporting and citizen action boards to the wonderful world of blogging and ezines, the traditional modes and mainstream entities responsible for reporting the news have had to embrace new mechanisms engendered by the public, the common layperson as it were. It is a beautiful thing to witness ordinary people taking an active voice in the free speech process, regular folk who aren't beholden to special interests groups or large media conglomerates. I am of the opinion that it was out of the necessity to make a difference, to go beyond the surface, that the new wave of public journalism has taken on such a huge significance in the twenty-first century and will so well beyond. I applaud the intelligent and resourceful men and women who venture into those untold waters and look forward to their tremendous efforts in actually seeking all the news that's fit to print in the future.

So there you have it. Even a working-class poor artist such as me sees much promise in the impending years to come. I'll be waiting . . .