On the New Year
Happy New Year! Welcome to 2025 - a year that I’m sure will be one for the record books. This year has unwritten potential, and now that we’re a week in, I’d like to look back on 2024 while also looking ahead. The past year was a bittersweet one. With every first of our marriage (first Christmas as a married couple in 2023) also came every first without my dad. The past year was hard in a lot of ways I didn’t anticipate. Trying to hold it together for my own sake, while also holding it together for everyone else’s sake, is one of my fatal flaws and I really saw that come to fruition in 2024. I kept pushing myself when I shouldn’t have, invested into friendships and work obligations way more than I should have, and insisted on putting others ahead of myself for far too much of the year. Brian reminded me that I needed to take time for myself in 2024, and I started focusing more on self-care in addition to my regular duties. I saw the past year as a time of self-discovery and growth. The good came with the bad though, as Brian and I continued to plan and prepare for our wedding ceremony, I fully committed to preparing for the ATP (Assistive Technology Professional) exam, we met new people, visited new places, and saw things I never thought I’d see before. I learned that I actually do like spicy foods, we really like building Lego sets, and our kitchen stove is partially run on AA batteries (true story - that’s a blog post for another time).
As I look forward, I’d like to set up some hopes for the year and see how many of them I accomplish. I’m not big into resolutions, mostly because I’m not too “resolute” with them. Everything on my list will happen eventually, whether it’s in ten minutes or ten years. So, here’s some things I’d like to do this year in no particular order:
Read 25 books
Visit one new NHP (bonus points if it’s in a new state)
Re-start learning a language, preferably Spanish
Finish a Legacy game (we have two ongoing right now!)
Get the website to 1000 views
Do something for Dad (plant a tree? dedicate a tree? go fishing? This one is very to-be-determined)
To close this, I’d like to remind myself of something my high school principal would say daily over the loudspeaker. It’s something that was really corny at the time, but it’s stuck and now it resonates: “Make it a great day or not, the choice is yours”
-G