I was thinking about the year in review. What else would you do on the last day of the year? It's been particularly eventful I feel. I started pretty darn optimistic, actually. I had a job, had just actually picked up a new student that added a bunch of hours to my schedule, had decided to ditch the credentialing classes that were frustrating me more than teaching me, and was looking forward to my first full year living in one location for 12 months that was not my parent's house. I had realized my tendency to just sit on the sidelines at church, which was my only real social interaction that I counted. So I decided that I was going to make an effort to participate in things more, which ended up looking like going to as many different classes and small groups as I could fit in my schedule because I decided the last time I'd had a social life was college. And what do you do at college except go to classes? Or so I reasoned...
It actually worked fairly well, in my opinion. The only rough bit was in the summer when the events to participate in were at a minimum and I was already in serious emotional difficulty because of the events of May, and my hours at work were cut to boot so then I had way less money all of a sudden. It was not a fun summer, to be sure. But everything picked back up starting in August, except for money which continued to be an issue plus the growing stress of working a job that was not paying me nearly enough for the amount of effort I was putting in. It wasn't a happy month and a half after I started looking for another job and requested no new students, because I knew what a pain it was to have to look for a new person to replace someone who's already established with a student. I was constantly at odds with my job, coming home mentally and emotionally exhausted after two hours of working with one student, which is not how it's supposed to be. And it's not how it was at first. Something shifted until it was more than clear to all parties involved that it was time for everyone to stop trying to make something work. That in itself was pretty painful, because as crappy as the last weeks were, I still loved the student I was working with and I didn't want to leave the way that I did.
In the midst of all this, everything else was looking up. In the last few months I've finally started to feel like I'm coming out of whatever cloud I've been wandering around in since graduation. I'm still not sure what to do, or what direction I'm going in exactly, but at least I don't feel like I'm rootless on top of it all. I've loved being established, being around to be a part of the same region for NaNo as I was last year, being able to say that I went to one church every week except for when I was on vacation for longer than a few months. College was like a forced transient lifestyle when it came to church, especially since I traveled so much with The Way and I never could find it in myself to attend weekly at my parent's church on breaks because of a number of reasons. I had forgotten what it was like to have that weekly home, how nice it. And since enrolling in Nikao, it's been much more of a home than ever.
So in terms of putting myself out there intentionally into community, I think I won. It wasn't just at church. It was with NaNo too, making an effort to go to a bunch of different write-ins, way more than I did the first two years, and then making the effort to stay at least minimally in contact with a few different people from the region. And also trying to be better about staying in contact with friends from Jessup who are still in the area, and attempting to see them more than once every 6 months. Which has definitely been the case the last few months, and that's been awesome because I love my friends.
As for other things... I don't know. It's hard to quantify everything that happened in a year. And then at the same time look forward to see what 2014 should be like. I'm trying to do at least a few of the self-betterment things that are constantly being bandied about on Facebook this time of the year. I started a 30-day planking challenge, because I figured it would be simple (if not easy). I want to do that thing where you save a graduated amount of money every week because I've experienced first hand this year what it's like to have savings run out on multiple occasions and it's not particularly fun. I figure it'll work because it's a minimal amount of money at first when I don't have a job, and it will increase when I do have a job. Because I will eventually become employed. It has to happen sometime.
Also, I think since I'm being better about not isolating myself, I'm going to focus on walking in my identity. Figuring out my identity was a theme of 2013. Now I need to actually work on accepting if (first things first...) and walking it out so I don't wander around directionless for the rest of my life. Because that's also something that I have figured out is not fun, from experience.
Finally, I found this photo on Facebook today:
I have officially decided to make this a New Year's Eve tradition starting this year that I will eventually pass on to my children. Because it just fits in so well with my personality. And when did a little punny literalism ever hurt anyone?
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