Old Year, New Year

Last night I read through all of my posts from last year, because I love doing a kind of year in review. If I had time, I’d read through my journal from last year too, but we were up too late last night for New Year’s Eve and I was up too early in the morning for Elizabeth. I’d do it today, but my four-day vacation is over and work is piled up, and I’m still unpacking from being away.

My family celebrates Christmas just before New Year’s, so I spent this transition night with them. I rang out the old year laughing with people I love. Laughing and loving is not a bad way to welcome the new year. I’ve missed a lot of these family gatherings the past few years, and I am glad I was there, but I think my ideal New Year’s Eve would be spent at home, eating good food, enjoying a fire, and reading and thinking about where I’ve been and where I’m going.

2011 was about embracing the fullness, holding the joy and the sorrow together. It was about watching that first year of astoundingly rapid growth from Elizabeth and the leaps and bounds of Kathleen. 2011 was about starting to come back to life by making time for things I love and, in some cases, simply remembering some parts of the old me that I had forgotten (or in the case of Brian and I remembering what it was like to be us). 

I don’t make resolutions, but I like to take stock at years end and again mid-year at my birthday. I like to figure out what is working in my life and what isn’t, what I want to keep and what I want to change.

In 2012 want to continue the opening I did in 2011, the rediscovery of me. I want let go of anger and frustration and laugh more. I want to notice what I am doing, not what I can’t quite figure out how to do. I want to keep working at that priorities thing that I smugly like to think I have in good order, until I can’t figure out how to get it all done, and as part of that I want to keep work at the letting go that December afforded me this year. 

What are your resolutions/goals/hopes for 2012?