On the last day of 2019 I find myself longing for a between space. I don’t want to cling to the year just past. It was too full of upheaval and stress for me to want to linger. Yet I’m not ready to launch myself into a new year yet. After tomorrow the holiday pause ends and the world will speed up again. I’ll need to find my work brain so I can pick up business tasks. I have Kickstarter obligations to fulfill. I need to remember how to be a writer, creative, and business person. What I would like to be able to do is let all of that lie fallow until my daughter’s wedding in two weeks. Just extend the holiday pause so I can do these family things while untroubled by all the rest.
I can feel that “all the rest” beginning to move and chew at the doors I’ve hidden it all behind in my brain. I would love to be in a place where I could throw those doors open, joyfully ready to tackle new projects. I’m trying to get there. One of the things I’ve been working on the past week has been the family photo book for 2019. Through placing pictures and words onto pages, I’m reviewing the year I just had and re-processing the experiences of it. It was a year where the financial and stress blows just kept on coming at a pace where we could barely keep up. We reached the point where we just laughed when yet another thing showed up in our lives.
This year ends with us five figures deeper in debt than we were last year. It also ends with important relationships built and lots of personal growth for everyone. We gained a family member (officially linked in two weeks.) Turned our house upside down by suddenly renovating half of it because of disaster clean up. Put two kids into college. Withdrew two kids from college. Paid a lot of therapy bills. And had creative projects significantly slowed down by all the uproar. And yet I treasure every bit of this year because the best bits -the bright, glowing, shining moments- were purchased with the crazy, stressful, upside-down bits.
I don’t feel like I have had enough time to really examine the impacts and gains from the past year. I don’t feel ready to launch into the year that is about to begin. But ready or not, time marches me forward into 2020