Thoughts on 2018, Words for 2019

Well, here we are. It is the first day of 2019. I meant to write two separate posts between yesterday and today, but I ended up being too busy yesterday. I got it into my head that what would feel best would be if all the mending I'd been putting off would be done before the end of the year. So I spent part of Sunday afternoon and evening and most of yesterday taking care of that. Holes were sewn up, and there was quite a lot of hemming. When you buy your clothing secondhand, sometimes the hems are wrong, or they fall out quite soon after purchase. Also, in my case at least, sometimes something that was purchased as a dress really wants to be a shirt instead. It can't be helped.

By the time I was done with all the mending, my computer had been moved into the girls' room for New Year's Eve - last year we decided it would be fun to watch movies and eat a dinner made up mostly of snack foods in their room, and it was, and so we decided to do it again this year. It's really a wonderful thing to ring in the New Year whilst wearing pajamas. I highly recommend it.

So, I did those things instead of writing a post about 2018. I am not sure there is a lot to say about 2018 that won't cross some boundaries I set for myself in my writing here, but I can say that it was both good and awful, and it was at times very, very hard. I hesitate to say this because I recognize the privilege of this life we have. It could always be worse. But I don't think it does anyone any favors to deny that things are hard sometimes. 2018 was a hard year in a lot of ways. When I set out my plan and goals around the word foundations, I had no idea how appropriate that word would be. Reading my post about it now, I realize that I had a lot of things wrong about the year. But the word was right. We have needed to build some new foundations. We have needed to tear things down to foundations that were good but had the wrong things built on top of them. And so we have done this work, and it has been hard.

Heading into 2019, the two words that resonate with me are optimism and permanence. I am not going to venture to set out certain goals related to those words here, or in general in my life. I have some guesses at some things that need to happen and may happen, and some things on my to do list which certainly will get done, but mostly I am open to how 2019 will unfold, and how we will move forward to build on the foundations that we uncovered and established in 2018.

Today what I felt would be fitting to start the year in the direction I mean to go was to attend to two tasks which I hope will give me some momentum to continue on with some other things on my list. I hemmed and repaired our living room curtains, which have been in need of this for more than a year, and I made a little curtain for our bathroom, for which I've had the fabric for at least a year. It feels good to move forward into the year with some old things repaired and a new thing complete. I hope to do more of the same, in various ways, as the year progresses.

Welcome, 2019. Please be good to us.