Friday, January 6, 2012

New Year!

The new year crept up on me this time around, somehow more cunning and evasive than usual.

I have my suspicions that this has something to do with getting older, with the general acceleration of time. I expect by the time I am 90 that the world around me will look like a big, muffled blur of activity. It seems silly to expect anything else.

I'm filled with only one major goal for this year: I want to reach the end of it and feel bittersweet about passing the torch to 2013... You see, I am sick and tired of reaching the end of the year and feeling contempt for it. You know, the grandiose vitriol of "Hey 2011, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out!" and what have you.

Instead, I want to feel wistful about the passage of a wonderful year, about having to hand it over in exchange for a fresh, new one.

In fact, maybe it's the sweet afterglow of the holidays (goddamn, I have just about the best family ever!), or perhaps it is the recognition of my wonderful friends (seriously, just about the most wonderful people you could ever hope to know), or it could just be that I am about to purchase a piece of land and attempt to make my dreams come true, but I have been feeling all sappy and grateful about life an awful lot lately.

In fact, despite the fact that we are almost 2 weeks into the New Year, I would like to express my gratitude for the good fortune I have had this past year, and then some:

  • I am grateful for my work. I love doing massage, am constantly learning new techniques and growing more skilled at my trade, and I feel consistently amazed that I can get paid to make people feel wonderful and relieve their pain.
  • I am grateful for my other work- landscape architecture. It is such a joy to be able to transform people's spaces with my ideas and skills. I love coming back season after season and seeing how my designs are evolving, growing, and thriving. Designing with plants means every single work is a work in progress, always- and I am grateful for every last job that comes my way.
  • I am grateful for a life filled with interesting experiences, for the will to take risks, and for the modest returns (and setbacks) these risks yield.
  • More than anything, I am grateful for a life that I genuinely enjoy living and sharing with the people who make it great.
Shockingly- it's taken me almost 2 weeks to complete this, despite the fact that it is no work of art. I promise a more esoteric, thought provoking post in the near future.