Personal Growth

Another year gone

Many of us said 2015 was the worst year ever.
Then came 2016 and that was horrible.
2017 was an absolute dumpster fire.
We’re running out of ways to describe worse.

2018 wasn’t all bad for me personally. I landed an incredible job this year. I’m still married to the greatest guy ever, and my family is all still relatively healthy. I’ve spent great times with friends and family. We increased our furry family count right before Christmas and it was a good move.

2018 also sucked rotten eggs in many ways. I won’t go into the politics in this post, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out where I stand in that regard. My chronic illnesses have all flared up over the year, to a startling degree in the last couple of months. Friends & family with their own health issues have fought hard this year too.

I’ve written before about choosing a theme for the upcoming year instead of making resolutions. For 2018, I had chosen a theme of “renewal”. I forgot that renewal often requires a good deal of destruction. In many ways, I got my renewal but with a healthy dose of destruction.

I am trying to decide on my theme for 2019. I don’t want to tempt fate by predicting what the year will be like. One of my good friends repeatedly says, “Expectations decrease joy.” If I expect good things to happen, then I’m setting myself up for disappointment. If I expect bad things to happen, then I’m borrowing trouble and not able to enjoy the present. Then again, I’m also a person who does better mentally when I’ve got a plan, and that requires projecting a bit. So I’m trying to find a middle path between planning and expectations.

For the upcoming year’s theme, I’m toying with “Peace”, “Calm”, and “Health”. Peace and Calm seem almost synonymous. Health seems pretty broad. I have a lot of areas I’d like to grow in, but Growth is another idea like renewal where you end up with a lot of hard stuff in the process, and I’ve had enough of that for a while. I like the idea of Abundance but it doesn’t specify a lot of good stuff or a lot of bad stuff. So I keep coming back to what I really crave this year… that it’s a calm one. That doesn’t preclude growth or abundance, but it does set an intention for myself and my life to keep an even keel. I’ll mull it over today and we’ll see where I land.