New Year’s Intentions

We talked for two hours, my sister-in-law and me. It was the first chance we’ve had to sit down and visit in almost a year. Both of our families have been in transition, stressed, hers more than mine. We both pulled inward and just managed the things in front of us. And we’re both poised on the edge of a new year which looks like it will contain more stability. I’m still not placing too much hope on that. I’m not looking too far ahead. I glance through the year so I can see the shape of the calendar, but then I focus only on the next few days.

Yet, unintended, I find I have concrete wishes for some of the ways that I want this next year to be different. I don’t like New Year’s Resolutions. I always have dozens of goals in progress and to attempt to renovate my life in a flurry of January goal setting sounds like a recipe for failure. Wishes is a good word, because goals are concrete and measurable. They are things which end up on my task list and which I then am assigned to complete. Some of these wishes have manifested small related goals, but mostly they are prayers for the general emotional content I’d like for this year. They’re the rough sketch which will change when it gets set into firm lines.

I would like to be more social this year, to unfurl where last year I pulled in.

I would like to leave the writer cupboard in my brain standing open because I’m digging into it often enough that closing it does not make sense.

I would like to continue to renovate the physical spaces in our house, knowing that this renewal is symbolic for the emotional renovations in our family.

I would like to spend more time happy and less time afraid.

If I want these things, I will need to make goals. Little goals, because big goals often fail, but a small well-designed goal can fit right into the life I already have. Small goals often feel like they are accomplishing nothing, but over time they transform. Rather like noticing today that Gleek’s teeth are almost straight in her braces, when they were extremely crooked last March. Small changes applied over time are what transformations are made of.