Shhhh. Nobody move.
The house is quiet except for the soft sound of Bach seeping in from the kitchen.
The company, which was enjoyed, has gone home, the Christmas decorations are put away for another year and the house is looking rather bare. Perhaps I need another plant?
I stumbled into 2022 already feeling battered and bruised. Still grasping for air, still looking for space, still waiting for my mind to return to itself and creativity to once again surface. 2021 was filled with many highs and many lows, and more transitions than a marriage can healthily manage. All of which you can read about in my 2021 Review: Parts 1, 2 and 3.
Most years, the 12 days of the Christmas leading up to New Years and onto Epiphany are full of energy and excitement as I map out my goals for the coming year, resolutions, and community challenges.
But this year is different.
This year, I am tired.
I feel that so much of 2021 was spent carrying loved ones through changes and grief and dragging tired team mates through the mud just so we didn’t sink deeper, let alone complete the annual lap in one piece.
Which is why the idea of starting something new or setting a lofty daily or even weekly goal in the hopes of establishing healthy habits and inspiring others to do the same seems completely daunting to me.
I want to. Oh, how I want to.
I get a high off new beginnings. I want to start something, do anything that will encourage others to be the best version of themselves, to be more rooted and confident, to find their voice and their sense of belonging in community and then to see that community grow, thrive and flourish.
But I am just so tired.
And plans still seem so precarious. Do I dare reach for my planner and map out the next year? Maybe just six months? Surely the next quarter? No, this week. Just focus on this week. Get the grocery order in, figure out what meetings I have and what to do with the kids who will be home for at least another week before returning to school, COVID-dependent. Plans, goals and resolutions seem far too fragile and fleeting to commit to.
So this year, I am taking a different approach.
Instead of being that person who runs around the pool to the deep end and gracefully, yet with flare, dives deep into a new year with strength and confidence creating only the slightest splash but causing a big ripple, I am dipping my toe in slowly, cautiously – like many on the cold Canadian Pacific coast, we take a few steps in…
and once our feet have become accustomed to the frigid temperature or numbed to it…
we take another step…
we wait and watch…
until we are up to our mid-thigh,
and then our waist,
until finally,
we are ready to lift our feet and take a breast-stroke through the cleansing ocean water.
I stand on the shore, wary but with intention and three words:
- Priorities
- Postures
- Practices
In the coming months, with each step, I will explore these ideas. Maybe I will even share my thoughts here but of course, would not dare commit to that.
In the meantime, however you are choosing to enter 2022, I wish you many blessings, love, joy, hope and peace.
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