jolly good fellow...

The year is out the gate with a bang. I woke up at 10:30, had chicken noodle soup for breakfast (so good for the soul, especially when it's made by momma), and stayed in my pajamas all day. I probably shouldn't admit that on a public blog. Ah, but who's to judge. One of these days has been a long time coming. Finally able to catch up on a lot of little things otherwise pushed to the back burner, finally able to just kill some time. And when a slight panic attack snuck up on me from thinking the weekend was almost over, my Mac smiled at me with a friendly reminder - Friday, January 1, 2010. Aaaaaahh. Deep sigh of pure joy.

A quick year in review for 2009. It. was. tough. Sometimes I wonder - because of frequent moves, job changes, friend changes, life changes - how many know the real me. Because I think the past two years haven't really been me. Not all of me anyway. Shining moments, hopefully, but not all of me. There's something missing, and this year has been a reflection of what that might be and why. I haven't found any black and white answers. No solutions plopped perfectly in my lap. Unfortunately. Blasted I wish it were that easy. Everything seems so complicated, so many things intertwined and overlapping and confusing.

The central theme I keep coming back to is this life is short. Way too short (of course, I'm not the Maker and from what I hear it gets much better than this, but it still seems short). And I'm always worried it will end before I'm able to experience my lofty dreams and adventures. Not even just the big adventures - I'd absolutely l-o-v-e to take a Europe backpacking trip and experience Alaska's wilderness (don't worry, I'm still planning on it), but it's the small things too. Coffee with friends, refreshing conversation, long hugs, good books. And at times I become so overwhelmed at what I haven't yet been able to do that I stop doing anything. I feel frozen. And I stop living.

Today I was clicking around a few of my favorite photographers' blogs (big ol' time-wasting guilty pleasure). I stumbled on Adventure Monkey. It's the musings of a photographer who had been sucked into all sorts of corporate cubicle mindlessness, and strongly desires to take the plunge in following his heart and focus on photography - free-spirited, wide open freedom to shoot whatever and whenever. Around the same time he took up cycling like nobodies business, so now he cycles, discovers, and shoots. And if that wasn't enough, he lives (from what I can tell) somewhere in the middle of Kansas. So his entries, reflections, and photographs pulled me in immediately. A few posts ago he wrote about the new year and his expectations for 2010. It felt like he was writing it for me; like he pulled the words right out of my mouth for the world to see. So I thought I'd share, and in some way make it my manifesto for the year as well:

'Today I refilled my little desk calendar with 365 more days. All the sudden, I had a moment. "This was a pretty good year," I thought. I need to do things for real on this next set of pages. I need divine inspiration, a spark of ingenuity to turn these ideas of mine into actions. I can't bear to live in this cage and change the calendar in 365 days. I am going to go for it next year. I will live as it is for an important reason, a purpose. I will not give up... This is the year that ideas must turn into actions. These next 365 days I dedicate to a life worth living.'

In a more recent entry he also noted:

'It would be nice to say I came up with a great idea that will solve all my problems while cycling the hundreds of miles I logged this year, but that’s not the case. I am simply ready to live. Ready to try new things again. Ready to make goals and the plans to achieve them. I have realized that life is short and I only live once. I want to leave it all on the field. I want to try and fail rather than having regrets for never trying. I want to inspire others to remember the dreams they once had and realize the only thing keeping them from achieving those dreams is fear. Fear is not real, it is in our minds, keeping us from living.'

Yep, I'm ready to live in 2010. Ready to take off this painfully comfortable shell I've been hauling around the past two years. Ready to be me.