This is also the year I actually have to do a lot of book reading. I have a stack — a mile high — of material I want to read that *gasp* isn’t on teh intarnet. I don’t even want to know how high the stack of material that *is* on the internet is. Fearsomely high I suspect, but it’s free & will be waiting, I suppose. To this end, I have a book light that I can use in the bedroom while sleeps… hopefully with the effect that I get to bed at a more reasonable hour. Stop laughing! And shut up about good intentions paving the road to hell too, while you’re at it.

This has to be the year the house sells or we decide that we’re staying (and deciding we’re staying entails undertaking some necessary upgrades like getting electrical redone, redoing bathroom, finishing downstairs floor, insulating the crawl space, maybe pre-emptive heating & water tank updating, among other things).

Did I mention I miss my books? I miss my fucking books.

And you know, I’m not so much into the usual gamut of resolutions and promises & crap. I have a few ideas of other things I’d like to do in the back of my mind, but those are ongoing rather than anything like “This year blah blah blah blah.”

That’s about enough not really reflectiveness for now. Now I s’pose I should figure out what’s for dinner for the first day of the new year.

When I put it on this afternoon, as I wrapped presents, it pushed me unexpectedly into year end reflection mode. It seems a little early for it, yet there it was. I thought about how my life has changed since a decade ago when I was learning to balance work, learning to be a parent, trying to figure out so much about how I was going to structure a life, a family life and how much I’ve done over the last decade. It seems like I’ve come a long ways when I listen to Vespers and breathe for a moment.

I’ve always taken this time of year off, from Xmas eve to New Year’s Day since M1 was born. Partly because my birthday falls in that time, partly because there’s just so much family stuff that happens (and now with my s-i-l’s b-day two days before mine, there’s even more), and partly because it’s my time, a gift to myself to pause, reflect, take stock in the past year & take a deep breath before jumping back into the fray to push through another year.

This year I’ll be actively checking in on work more than I have in the past. Everyone on my team wanted to go home for Xmas (I hope everyone gets to where they’re going to safely!), so the deal I made was that it was fine — but we *all* needed to check in just a couple times a day & make sure the immediate stakeholder requests were getting taken care of. The other stuff can wait until the new year. I will fully take my birthday off. I have no intention of looking at work on that day. Hopefully the work intrusions over the next two or so weeks will be minimal.

But reflection has definitely set in early. I think at least in part because of the snow. It comes and goes and comes again. I’ve never seen the snow here so deep. It just keeps coming and every now and then the news says, ‘oh, it’ll warm up…’ and then the next forecast pushes the snow out even further. And I’m in reflection mode and the most I can muster up about it is that it’s just how it is right now and I turn to reflect on other things.

It feels strange to realize, again, that I haven’t been breathing. Enough to keep propelling me forward, but not whole breaths. It’s nice to breathe again, at least a little more frequently. And to watch the snow drift down into little boot prints outside.

But now, before this reflectiveness becomes an all-night vigil for me, though I’d like to sit and just sit and listen to nothing and look at nothing and just breathe… it’s time to shift to bed. Matins always comes too early for this night owl…

Yeah, I nearly lost it. Totally weepy.

The hope of children is a damn powerful thing…