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Over the Christmas break I had an epiphany. Christmas is good for epiphanies, if not for the spirit that is in the air, then for the fact that life pauses for a moment to let me catch a breath, enjoy some nog, and eat way too much food.

For a good portion of my adult life I'd been living in the past or clinging to some distant future goal. Publishing my novel is chief on the list of distant, or not so distant, future goals. I realized that I'd been so absorbed in the things that I regretted or things that made me angry in the past, and that I'd been so absorbed in the things that I wanted to accomplish that I was forgetting about the here and now. I was forgetting that being outside just to feel the cold on my cheeks is a good thing, or that sitting with my kids and enjoying a game of Rock Band with no thought of yesterday or tomorrow is a more valuable gift than any kind of jewelry money can buy. 

The odd thing is that it wasn't cancer or any profound event that led to a clearing of vision. I say clearing because there's still a lot to be dusted away, but I feel like this is the beginning of a better way. It's just been a gradual shift, with missteps along the way for sure, but it's a shift that feels brighter in so many ways. 

I suppose the closest thing I have to a New Year's resolution is that I hope to continue my practice in this better way. I won't say it's easy. It's become habit for my mind to gravitate to lists of what should be done and worrying about whether everything will ever be done.

So, my wish for readers in the New Year, then, is for all to have many happy moments.