winding down

The holidays and the calendar year are winding down. I have been spending these recent days savoring quiet moments. Christmas time was a whirlwind of fun this year: an extensive scavenger hunt and lego robots and mysterious secret projects in the barn workshop; bird watching and dreamy snow flurries every day and ginger cookies, thumb prints and buck eyes; twinkling lights and carols on the piano and new toys. And most of all, good quality time spent with family, including the adorable newest additions who make the season all the more magical.

I love spending time with family over the holidays. This year work obligations meant coming back to Chicago earlier than usual, but luckily we were able to work from home. Thus the week after the whirlwind has been spent hibernating in our cozy nest, dealing with manuscript revisions and early morning international phone calls and unfortunate post-holiday sickness (luckily short lived this time) – but again savoring moments of togetherness, curled up with mugs of hot chocolate and watching nearly the entire Pillars of the Earth television adaptation on netflix over the past few evenings (I am certain we’ll be done before the weekend ends). The quiet feels restorative right now.

We decided to spend new year’s eve on our own as well and I am plenty satisfied with yet another quiet night ahead of us.  We have our own ways to wind down the year. We made a big list of home projects for the next year, and started crossing some of them off today. We had financial planning conversations about our goals for the next year. It is a good time for tying up loose ends, reorganizing, making new plans.

 The end of the year is also a time of reflection, and right now I can’t help thinking about the things that did not get accomplished in 2010 ~ I had some big plans, after feeling frustrated with my life, like being stuck in a rut. So I had made up my mind that big things were going to happen in 2010; it would be the year for change. Here I sit now though, and not much looks different; I have to accept that those changes were not meant to be this year.  Instead, I should think about what *did* happen. Travels to Seattle and Providence and Boston and Paris and London. A new tent, which spurred several camping adventures. Job interviews ~ they did not lead to a new career, but one of which involved a big presentation to a prestigious research group, another led to an offer of consulting work. And at my job, I switched to some new directions and found fulfillment in new ways. A promotion for my husband. A month of daily blogging. An 8K, half marathon, and 15K races. Looking back, it has been a pretty good year in the end. Who knows what 2011 will bring… but hopefully it will be another fulfilling year, and this time, I am looking forward to the unexpected :)

Happy new year!