Happily, I'm starting out this new year with plenty to keep me busy. I have two different manuscripts to read for a couple of online critique partners I work with, lots of submission research to do, and I've already sent one short story on its way as a contest submission. The year is off to a good start.
I haven't set any clear cut resolutions or made myself deadlines to strive for. I'm still trying to live in the moment day by day. It is going to be challenging this year. There have already been some big changes that have happened since my kids went back to school. Some families are moving, another teacher has taken a job elsewhere. My daughter, especially, is concerned how these things will impact her little cluster of friends. Last spring I admit I kept getting one of my 'feelings' that things were going to be different--that changes were coming. I thought at the time it would directly impact my family. And while there have been some big and unexpected changes over the last several months, most of them have been with other families and friends pursuing new opportunities and leaving the area. I've watched them go and wondered if my 'feeling' was about how their changes would impact us or if these sudden losses of friends we didn't expect to go elsewhere are just the beginning of a state of flux for my own family.
There are big decisions ahead for me and my kids in the coming year. I'm still uncertain about where my daughter should go for high school or whether I should take a year to home school her so she can pursue bigger opportunities for stage work with a professional children's theatre. My son I'm content to keep in his current school another year. I like the band program there and next year he'll be old enough to try band for the first time. He may decide playing a musical instrument isn't for him or he may decide he loves it. Either way it isn't an opportunity I want to deprive him of. I myself have been considering applying for a graduate program I've been looking into to earn another degree, this time in fine arts.
Living in the moment will help ground me in the here and now as I look toward the future and which path I want to take next with my kids and in my own journey. One thing I really would like to do in the new year is whittle down my to-be-read pile...
This is what it looked like a year ago. It hasn't gotten any smaller. I'm afraid to take a picture of what it looks like currently. But I am determined to get a handle on it as a reward for getting my other work done as I wait out the cold winter months till spring. What about you? Any strong emotions toward this traditional season of renewal and setting resolutions? Anyone else have to-be-read piles that might have grown a wee bit out of control? I'd love to hear about it.
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