Despite being past the Mercury retrograde (finally!) I have been thinking about the lessons of the past year. Yes, I probably should have gotten that over with in the past week or so, but what can I say, I’m running behind.
Working on resetting the planner had me entirely future focused for the last, shit, seven weeks? I feel like I’ve been living entirely in the future. Then, when I finally delivered the January planners, it was such a blessing to just have a bit of down time, having the kid home, spending time as a family, having a lovely Yule / Christmas / Solstice.
So it makes sense that only now, as the tree comes down and the cleanup from the EPIC New Year’s Day hangover brunch is complete, I’ve been pondering the past year.
During the fall, we had a lot of the kind of weather they call an “atmospheric river.” This is a series of very wet storms that blow in from the Ocean in waves and dump masses of water on the Pacific Northwest. It’s very humid and while it’s cool, it feels warmer than it should because it’s coming up from the South. It’s weird, pensive weather, and we had a ton of it.
During breaks between squalls, we would go out and enjoy the quiet between stormfronts on our back deck. One particularly beautiful evening, the sky was filled with high clouds moving very fast. Fast moving clouds always make me feel a little off balance and dizzy. Usually things in the sky move reasonably slowly. Fast moving things (meteors, starlink spy-droids, UFOs) are disconcerting. As were these clouds.
That’s what this past year felt like: high clouds, moving fast. Large things far away moving very quickly and inexorably. Changes that are going too quickly but out of our reach and our control. If you’ve follow my stuff at all, you know that being out of control is uncomfortable for me.
2023 was the year of high clouds moving fast in the world, but also in my life and household. Urgent eye surgery and last minute flights and big life decisions and crazy brainstorming and dog on dog violence and snap decisions to take a month off and drive halfway across the country (not necessarily in that order). For someone whose decision making tends to be measured enough to border on paralysis (I’m the person at the jelly display with a spreadsheet having a nervous breakdown) this was… a lot.
It was also a year of rabbits and chickens and of the front garden. It was the year that the kid found his path in the world. It was a year of amazing friendships and connections. It was a year of helping and connecting more people, which is the thing I love best in the world.
So yeah, 2024 snuck up on me this year, but I think on balance it’s a good surprise.
SIDE NOTE: I officially declare email amnesty. If you are waiting on a response from me, maybe shoot me that email again? I tried to be thoughtful with the bulk delete, but you know, you gotta do what you gotta do.
