I saw a post today about being in the middle between Christmas and New Years, when you don’t know what day it is or what you’re supposed to be doing. Healthcare has no holidays, so we don’t really have that, but I get the sentiment.
I have reached the point in the holiday season where I’m maxed out. Don’t get me wrong. I love the holidays. I love the extra time with family. I love the decorations and giving presents and all the things. But every year I come to a place where I need it to be done. And, unfortunately I think I usually come to that place first before everyone else.
Maybe it’s the curse of the introverted part of me or maybe it’s the routine craving type A part. I’m not sure. But as I reflect, I realize I’m not a bad person, and I, without fail, reach this place every year about this time.
It all becomes too much of a lot of things and not enough of the things I’ve come to treasure so much this year. Too much food. Too much drink. Not enough alone time. Too much noise; not enough silence. Too much people; not enough of MY people. Too much outside voices; not enough still small voices. Too much busyness.
And I’m done. I took the decorations down yesterday and finished today. They are put away safe for another year. I try to get back my routine and my people, but know that until New Years comes and goes it will still be off in a lot of ways. People are still busy with the holidays and are less over it than I am. Life doesn’t really resume for most until the ball drops.
We’re in the empty place where we look to 2018 to end and 2019 to begin but we must wait a few days for it to officially occur. Some of us have returned to work (I mean some of us never left) and some are still flitting around aimlessly. (Yep. I don’t hate you; I just envy you lol).
We start to evaluate the year and look for goals to set for the new one. Some people refer to these as resolutions, but I don’t want to resolve to do anything because more times than not that resolve fails pretty quickly. I want to set a goal to do something. I just don’t know what yet.
We are looking towards a “Goals Weekend” with my people and I’m very much looking forward to it. I’m enjoying getting some little silly projects done for it because I’m a sucker for weird projects that make things special (I hope). But as I do that, I started thinking, what ARE my goals for next year?
At this point, I feel like surviving 2019 might be on the list, but realistically I still need to survive the rest of 2018 at this point. I’m not sure why I am thinking like that but I am. I think recent things are just still heavy on me. I almost texted someone to say, “hey if anything happens promise you’ll still have goals weekend” but I didn’t because nothing will happen and it seemed unnecessarily dark. (But hey…Goals Weekend is that important. You know, just in case.)
Part of setting goals sits in evaluating the past and I feel like I am not sure how I am still trying to learn the same lessons. I mean I feel like an intelligent person but yet some things appear hard for me to grasp. I’m not sure why. I feel a little bit out of control again and like I’m grasping to hold tight onto all the things so much that I am dropping more than I’m holding. It’s the thing I always do when I don’t like the situation…grab tight to the parts I do like. But I don’t want to lose those parts and people to the efforts of holding on. And so the struggle.
The trials, the hardships, the good, the bad…it’s all part of the journey to mold us into whoever we’re to become. I can’t quite put my finger on goals for next year yet and I’m not sure why. I mean I have a few weeks to come up with some but it just seems so important for some reason. I don’t want to just scribble down throw away goals. I want them to matter. I feel like, in some ways, it’s the first step to making 2019 a better year than it’s predecessor.
I would like to leave 2018 a better person than I entered and there’s not a lot of time left for that. But I’d definitely like to leave 2019 a better person than I enter. Maybe that’s the start of the goals.
This Season.... 