End Of Year Thoughts

2017. The year I graduated college. The year I started a job at a bookstore. The year of Hurricane Harvey. The year I witnessed the sun slip into blackness; the year I was surrounded by a 360 degree sunset. My first winter in four years without seeing snow. Hopefully the year I finally finish the first draft of a novel. A transition year - half in school, half in the "real world."

I've always been more inclined to look forward than to look back. Reflecting on the past does not come naturally to me. Whenever I try, the days come back to me in a hazy blur and I think, "Was that this year? Was that yesterday? Was that last month?" It's around this time of year when I start making plans in earnest. I ready my planner for January. I draft lists of resolutions. I prepare to re-set my life, take stock, even if it rarely lasts more than a couple of weeks. This year, though, 2017 feels like unfinished business. I'm not ready to be catapulted into the wilds of 2018. I have too much to finish, and for once, it feels like some of those goals I made this time last year are actually within reach.

I don't really know what this post is supposed to be. Probably just another vague post about "something coming," about all that potential that I'm just barely learning how to grasp onto. Sometimes I feel like I'm always on the cusp of productivity, of figuring out what it is I want, of the next big project. I'm never in the middle, I'm always just starting out. Or maybe it just feels that way because in my own idealistic way, everything feels like beginning. Maybe I'm in the middle and I don't even know it.

What I'm really trying to do is remind myself to move slowly, take it all in. Not to spend so much time planning for the future that I miss the present. 

The present is this:

-Fall color in the leaves (finally)

-Christmas careening toward us in all its tinselly glory

-Sitting in warm coffee shops and jotting down bits of other people's conversations

-Wrestling with big writing projects, mapping how much I need to write every day if I want to finish by December 30th, veering wildly between thinking I can do it and thinking it's an impossible, inhuman task

-Writing rambly blog posts just to get myself back into the habit

-Coveting clothes I can't afford; falling in love with Juniper scented candles, even though I've never been the kind of girl who has the urge to burn candles; trying not to fall prey to the consumerism of the season

-Tentatively listening to my Christmas playlist, then deciding I'm not in the mood for Christmas music and listening to something else; wondering when the Christmas bug will bite me this year 

-Working on carrying everything deeply, all at once

-Devolving into sentimentalism

-Signing off now

For those of you still reading, I'm sorry for the word vomit. Feel free to comment your own wishy-washy seasonal feelings below.