I can’t say that financially we’re any better off this year than last, except that a few positive things looking forward are in place, such as a better plan for taxes and refinancing our mortgage into a lower interest HELOC.
But that’s not what life is about.
Life is about me coming to peace again with my own mortality, which I had lost since LadyBug died a year earlier. The change was like a burden had been lifted, and happened around the time I was made a Mason. I also came to peace with an untruthful past, with my daughter now old enough to know and accept that I was there for her when she was little, contrary to what she had been conditioned to believe for so many years. In fact, we worked on our first real adulthood project together, “What is fashion?“, and it was an amazing growing experience all the way around.
I didn’t get to visit my Dad — my greatest regret. The projects I was counting on to fund it crashed or were delayed, and Christina really wanted to go as well. But I did expand my skills and am more expansive and confident in what I can offer people professionally, so it’s only a matter of time.
I think my writing and sense of useful activism in little ways is coming together. I just gave a lecture at a local ecumenical gathering on my “Earth 2 Mouth” project. I’m at home in my own skin, and in my own home. It seems there are just a wealth of intangibles that made this one of my best years ever, in spite of not achieving some of the things I had hoped. I’m letting go of things that need releasing and embracing things that need exploring. and accepting. And I feel I’m ready for an even better next year.