2018 was release.
It was letting go of everything that I thought I wanted, and learning not to squeeze the things that I had too tightly.
It was trips with my friends, going to New York and a tree house in the woods and Boston and Salem. It was Annapolis, again and again. It was Montana and Wyoming and Yellowstone and the most beautiful wedding I’ve ever attended. It was seeing First Aid Kit twice in the same year.
It was rewriting, but very little new work. It was trying, over and over again, and having to let go of a timeline that suddenly wasn’t achievable. It was wanting so badly to reach my dreams and having to learn that this just wasn’t the year it was going to happen.
It was acceptance.
It was learning how to ask for exactly what I want and to not stand for anything less, even if saying no is the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do. It was making boundaries and testing their strength. It was learning exactly what was on the other side of standing up for myself.
It was falling (back?) in love.
It was reaching almost none of my goals but exceeding at the most important ones. It was travel, it was love. It was wandering with no real place to go. It wasn’t writing every day, it wasn’t blogging as much as I’d like, but it was scribbling into my journal at any small chance I had.
2018 was learning how to accept exactly where I am right in this moment. It was a big fat year-long lesson in letting go of control.
It’s a lesson I’m still learning.
2019 is confidence. It is stepping into exactly who I am. It is embracing that person, holding her tight, not being afraid to show her off to the world. It is loving myself. It is not being afraid to fail. It is trust. It is getting comfortable with being vulnerable. It is being okay with being alone. It is knowing who I am and not being afraid to open up to the world.
It is coming together, it is writing, it is creating. It is finding my own home, both physically and online. It is not being afraid to take up space when I get there.
Mary E. Nolte 