This Will Be a Good Year

This will be a good year.

Six words. Six simple, shiny words. True ones. True because I believe them, it. I believe that this year - 2013 - will be among my best yet. Why the confidence, the arguably non-ADR-esque breed of optimism? I'm not sure, but it feels pretty sweet and so I will roll with it.

So. Here I am. Rolling with it. Back. Back in this place I genuinely love, this place I cherish deeply. My time away was important and illuminating, mottled with brilliance and boredom both, the magic and mundane of holidays and everydays. There were, as always, moments of treasure and truth and also moments of trickiness. There was breathtaking sweetness, there were world class snuggles, but there was also sleeplessness and struggle. Again and again, I realize that it is always, will always be, both. Both delicious and hard. Both. I am finally coming to accept this. Celebrate it even.

I have so much to tell you. Stories to share. Realizations to explore, and examine. And I will do these things, all of these things, because they are important to me. These odd and ineffable things I do day in and day out - the telling, the sharing, the exploring, the examining - are all part of who I am and if I had to pick one goal for 2013, it would be to be myself. No more. No less.

Myself.

Cheesy, you say? To announce a cliched desire to Be Myself. Maybe so. I don't care really.

Anyway, I could go on and on and the cool thing, the thing that makes me smile an incomparable smile, is that I will. In 2013, I will go on and on and on. About what it means to me to be a writer, a wife, a mother, a human, a friend, a fumbler, a stumbler, me.

Happy 2013 to all of you - whoever you are, really are, and wherever you are literally, metaphorically, existentially in this netty ether, this one life, this big, bad, beautiful world.

*

Are you feeling good about the upcoming year?