A year.

Once in a while I’ll get an email from WordPress exclaiming “Your stats are booming!” and I can only scratch my head and wonder why. I haven’t written in over a month- and I can feel it in my bones.

The lack of true and open expression has affected me. I miss the feeling and the flow and the intense calm it provides. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to write. It’s not that I haven’t had thirty days of things to write about, some small and mundane and some massively exciting and mysterious. I’ve just been busy. It’s not that I haven’t had what feels like a million things going on at once or a more than full plate before, it’s just that this time around I haven’t learned to balance my work, social life, and maintaining a personal relationship with myself well enough to make time to fit writing into my schedule. I admire you moms more and more with each day, particularly those who raise families on your own, who have loving and rich relationships with your partners, who write, who do, who go go go and still make time for your passions. You’re admirable and I love sitting down with some of you and listening to your stories, and admire you even more for taking interest in mine when your lives are so full and busy already.

Today during a rare moment of clarity, I wrote “Among my favorite things ever is a brand new planner for the year” on various social media platforms. Yes! My Moleskine yearly planner had finally arrived, the little packet of bound pages that make getting through each day seem so much more manageable. And then I started filling out 2016, only the first week, and felt myself become a bit more and more defeated as each line filled up. Don’t confuse this chapter of stress as me not enjoying a busy and full schedule- I do much better with a full calendar than swanning around doing nothing: it’s just that I realized that 2016 is coming and coming very, very quickly. I wasn’t quite prepared for that. But am I really for anything, at least consciously so?

I am so charged for this coming year. I gather energy from time alone -although it’s come little recently- I gain insight from mentors who allow me to be myself and celebrate my successes and gently acknowledge my failures, and I slowly and surely map out how I am going to make this next year “work” for me. And by working for me, I mean working in a way that will allow me to utilize whatever I have to surround myself with the people I love, to give freely, and to offer without question.

I will always remember, cherish, and be grateful for those who have held their hands open and their arms wide to me in times of need whether financially, emotionally, spiritually, or physically- all gifts of their own sort- and I so want to be able to do that for the ones I love, and even for those I don’t.

There are many things I don’t like about myself. One that I’ve recently encountered is getting annoyed at people when I’m in the throes of my hive of focusing on my tasks. When I get into that mindset the feelings and emotions and needs of others lessen and lessen to the point where I forget that even though I might be doing ten things at once, they may not know that. Being snappy or short isn’t going to make them feel loved or important, and that’s the opposite of how I want them to perceive our relationship whether it personal, professional, or in passing.

Two thousand sixteen. What a number, and what a year. I have no doubt that it will trump this last which has been a whirlwind and probably my least favorite in about the past six. Something about a quarter life crisis, perhaps? Wherever I find myself at the end of these coming twelve months, I hope that I’ll have gained as much insight as I have in 2015 because whether the times were good, bad, or just plain vanilla in between- there has been some tiny amount of growth that will, I trust, equate to something valuable one day.

Cheers, my friends, and thank you for being part of my life.