30: Be the conductor
31: Follow the fear
32: Plant the seeds
33: Completion is freedom
34: One thing at a time

My birthday is somehow already here again, and as I realized just yesterday, that means it’s time for a yearly review!

(Past years’ entries all have this tag.)

A LOT happened this year, and I’m going to try to keep it short, because while our whole house is currently in a time warp, we’re still striving to get to bed at something resembling a decent hour (and it’s already past that, as I’m starting this…so I’m going to try to not push it too far).

We did manage to get an offer accepted on a house last summer, and while it was a bit of an adventure getting everything sorted (including but not limited to “buying the house a new roof before we closed, because the appraiser wouldn’t sign off on our mortgage until we did”), everything basically worked out in the end. So we have a house! And we live in it! And the house is full of deferred maintenance, so there are lots of things we CAN do, and will eventually want to take care of, but nothing is really urgent anymore. One step at a time.

We’re within walking distance of a bunch of friends, we host a monthly Quiet Reading Night modeled after a friend’s erstwhile Dinner For Tired People (a Friday night dinner wherein the expectations were that 1) you might eat soup, 2) you were okay with the presence of cats), we have gardening space, we have a zillion roses blooming right now, and I have my own office (a big win for me in terms of thriving as a remote worker).

Still lifting, and the gym’s just moved to its own new location (not subleasing any space anymore!). I’ve had some really good months recently of practicing moderation and being extra attentive to my form. Although I’m taking a short break at the moment, because also…

We had a baby! Like, real recently. She is 16 days old today. If you follow me on any kind of social media, you haven’t seen anything about this, and that’s been intentional. It’s been nice to share the news with people one-on-one, as we talk to them…although I think we’re at the point where that won’t really last much longer unless we keep deliberately editing her out of everything we post. (Unlikely! We’re big fans of this kid.) She’s been (knock on wood) a blessedly easy baby so far, even though the road to get here was a mess. And we are extraordinarily fortunate to (BOTH!) get several months’ paid parental leave, which is giving us a bunch of focused time as a family of three, and means we won’t need any kind of childcare until the fall. I cannot believe how lucky we are to get that much support from our employers in this country.

I don’t feel like I was as serious about completion as I’d have liked to have been this past year, but the house and baby projects have been percolating for a while now, and it’s kind of amazing to have had them both work out at about the same time.

And then I entirely forgot about the practice of writing this post until yesterday. Very unusual for me at this point, and means I haven’t been mulling over (or fretting over) possible themes for this year. (Another opportunity for completion, not perfection.)

I know I want to be especially intentional about being present this year; the parents we know all stress that these early days go so fast, even if it can seem so slow at times. I know I’d like to spend more time practicing focusing on a single thing at a time (I already know “multitasking” is a crock, but I still split my attention most of the time, especially during work). That goes for work and home, and I’m actually a bit excited to have to work harder to maintain both, because I think it’s likely to focus my attention in a different way.

I could probably say this in a million different clever ways, but keeping it simple seems like an excellent idea.

On to the next thing!