My 2014
This year I am going to do something I usually don't like to do: I'm going to keep things the same.
You know the words thing? Choose a word for the year, or choose three words? Something to live by, to set your north toward. I chose three of these last year:
Story (For goodness sake, WRITE)
Home (Paint the trim, buy new throw pillows, clean things.) and
Believe (You try, you hope, you get antsy, you work hard - well, you work; but don't forget to believe).
The thing is, I don't feel done with these. Who says every season is exactly and only one year? We certainly wish that was the case with some things. I could name a few things I wish I could have tucked into one year and one year only for now and all eternity, amen. But in this case, I want to carry some things forward. For goodness sake, I'm fighting cancer again, I ought to be able to bring along the good things, too, the things that make me stronger and happier and at peace. So I hereby marry my 2013 to my 2014 and pronounce them basically one. We still had our traditional family toast to the new year, and I watched New Year's Eve again, and Michael sat down by me and said, "Who's in this?" again, and I fell for it again, and said, "Everybody." Because it's one of those movies with so many celebrities you probably don't even recognize them all, and he knows that and asks me "Who's in this?" just so he can get me to take him way too seriously and start naming names he could not care less about.
So, anyway, I approached December 31st and January 1st with my usual over-the-top belief that everything is brand new and surely This Is My Year. Still, I slid into it still holding the inner tube from last year, the same three words painted on it. I also brought with me the diagnosis of another recurrence - we're back to the left lung again, with a tiny little tumor that did not light up on a PET scan but appears to be my cancer all the same. I begin radiation treatments this week to end that little troublemaker. Which reminds me - I've added one word to the 13-14 lineup: Finish. There's a whole crapload of things I would like to finish and leave right here on the already-muddied, already glorious field of 2014. Let's raise a hearty glass to that.
Happy New Year