Welcome 2020!
Happy New Year & Many Wishes For A Great 2020 To All! If you are reading this then you made it another 365 days which means you survived the holiday season (Thanksgiving & Christmas with or without family) whether it proved to be stressful or not.
I love welcoming a new year for many reasons. First of all, celebrating it means quite literally I lived to see it which is always a good thing. But often being appreciative of your own state of living as December slips away comes with remembering those you may have lost over the past calendar year. Death serves as a reminder of our own mortality and how no day granted to us by the Almighty should be taken for granted.
Secondly, for me the new year means getting past Christmas which can be dreadful in these modern day commercialized times. Don’t get me wrong I love the holiday and all the joy and excitement it brings but it can be tedious—very sometimes. I have young kids, kinda— a tween almost a teen and one approaching double digits. So Christmases for us have become a lot more calculated less freestyle because they have “expectations,” if you know what I mean. Holiday planning for me usually starts in September, deciding where we will spend our Thanksgiving and how our Christmas eve and day will be divided amongst family near and far.
I know many plan their holidays waaaaay before fall but that usually includes booking tickets to wherever they plan on going unless they plan to host which is a totally different stratosphere. After all the shopping of the season, the putting up and taking down of the decor, the baking, the cooking, the traveling, the holiday stretch can get tedious real fast.
Our Thanksgiving this year was tame, we just headed to my sisters’ home some 30 miles away, ate, hung out then headed back home stopping for a little casual late evening shopping along the way. But Christmas was a different tale, with the day falling mid-week and publication dates changing it was necessary to work Christmas Eve and with me having to greet Santa in the wee morning hours there was little down time.
Between the stroke of midnight on December 24 and the stroke of midnight on December 26, I slept less than 12 hours and drove some 580 plus miles. Never fear I made up for the lack of rest with some needed R&R and a little Star Wars.
Lastly, I love welcoming the new year because it is like starting anew. You can review the triumphs and mistakes of the past 12 months and continue the progress while trying to avoid making the same mistakes at will. I find that it is a good time to take inventory of your life—how far you have grown, where exactly it is you want to go spiritually, mentally, financially, physically, or whatever.
It’s a good time to revamp any areas in your life that require it whether it be mending broken fences with an old friend or acquiring new like-minded ones. It’s a time for remembrance, rejoicing, and embracing what might come. I am not really into making new year’s resolutions—one should just resolve to be better in all aspects of life I think.
As to where and how I will ring in the new year—that’s to be determined but it will likely include wine for me and sparkling cider for the kids.
Here’s wishing everyone much merriment, good health, and harmony in 2020. Be safe, be wise, and be true to yourself all year long.