Playing for Time

***

New year, who dis? Waking up to the seventy-sixth New Year’s Day I’ve witnessed so far, and feeling good about it. 2024 is my Now or Never Year, not that I think I’m running out of chances, but it’s simply time. Time to stop saying “I need to” and just do it. To stop with the “I shoulds” and do it. Stop waiting for… whatever… and do it NOW. I have a list.

I hope you’ll pat yourself on the back for the prep you did in 2023 to get ready for today and what follows. Indeed everything that happened last year was groundwork for this one, good or bad. I’m congratulating myself for finally sticking to the script and transferring small truckloads of idle goods into needier hands. I’ll never have to deal with any of it again, and hopefully somebody’s benefitting. As I knew it would, the process has freed up my mind for other, more satisfying things, making me actually feel younger rather than older with this changing of the guard.

This morning I’m taking time to acknowledge, appreciate, and finish processing the things in 2023 that tested me to my limits. There were pitfalls and lessons and plenty of reminders of fallibility in every direction, which have only emboldened me to pay better attention going forward, establish my boundaries with the greater world, and keep moving. I’m feeling grateful to my grandmothers, all of them, for the grit and bravery they transmitted to an entire family line. In great part they’re why I’m still here today after a tough set of years now behind us, so I’ll be continuing to implement their strengths wherever possible. You be strong, too, in the year ahead, and spellbound by peace.

**