2008
2008, you really had a hard act to follow. 2007? Now that was a year. All that newness of the West and the desert and all that free time and the traveling to Wyoming and Idaho and California and Florida and New York and all over good Oregon and then the boys, lots of boys.
2008? The year I learned what it was like to work 70 hours a week. To not have a day off for 6 weeks. To assume the responsibility of an Executive Director. To see what that does to your social life and your friends and your poor roommates.
Not that I realized it at the time, but I spent most of 2008 keeping a tight hold on my feelings. Tried not to get too attached to any of it because none of it was really at all permanent. I made and enjoyed the company of friends, coworkers, a boyfriend, but none of it ever felt complete. There were few moments of true open-heartedness or abandon.
Don't get me wrong, there was a lot to love - cozy evenings cooking with housemates, gleefully laboring away my weekends in the garden, growing enough food to hardly need to buy a thing for months, camping with N, enormous successes at work (mobile market! harvest dinner!), a 100% awesome East Coast trip, learning to be pretty competent on my xc skis, the glorious family reunion on Siesta Key, a long December vacation in FL, friends' visits at various times in the year... plenty to love.
I just didn't do a great job of really loving all the good stuff like I could have.
My job keeps me here for now: I'm being paid to learn and do what I love and I have the freedom to decide how things get done. It is a huge privilege and I do my best every day not to take this for granted. I just wish the rest of the pieces of my life fit together around it better. I did a pretty piss poor job last year of balancing my work, my life, and my person. I worked hard and let my social life and personal health suffer.
Last year I made a bunch of very concrete resolutions and followed through only partially with them - I mean, did I really think I'd try kiteboarding? So this year I'm going to take a different tack, in the interest of getting back into balance and back to a place that I want to be.
It boils down to this: to make an honest, open-hearted effort to live each day and fill them with the things I need to be happy - friends, family, solitude, the outdoors, art, words, love. And when that doesn't work out so well, (because it doesn't always) to let that expectation go without frustration or beating myself up over it.
Sounds pretty simple, pretty cheesy. But it's what I need to hear from myself right now, and it's where I want to be. Now to make it happen.