Random Thoughts for the New Year

I haven’t been able to properly string this together so forgive me for the brain dump.

This is the place where I sort through my thoughts and it’s been a while since I’ve written a good rambling. Here it goes, a few things that have been rattling around in my head lately.

• I’m trying to discern between sharing candidly, as I have done in this space all of these years, or keeping my family life more private. Lately I’ve been transcribing my thoughts and memories in journals I share with my sisters, one journal with my cousin and the kids Birth to 18 years journals. Photos feel more sacred now to be shared between family members and loved ones. I’ve ebbed and flowed with this over the years. Sharing more at times and pulling back when it feels right.
• I’ve turned inward and more protective over the course of the past few years. It’s age or loss, or hurt or all of it. The culmination of those things causes me to refrain from sharing myself as much.
• I don’t always have a word for the year but this year a few themes have been pressing on me. Quality, Stillness, and Consistency.
• I don’t want new friends. I lost too many old ones. I like who I have left and I’m too tired to put effort in right now for anything deep. I kind of just like spending time with my little family.
• I can’t believe Lincoln is mine. He’s so stinking cute. He kicked the paci and opted for his index and middle fingers on his right hand.
• I can’t believe Felicity is mine. The other day I asked God why he gave her to me because she is so different than I was. I laid in her bed next to her while she slept and I wondered what it would be like to be Felicity Poe.
• I’m annoyed by things like peroneal tendonitis in my left foot and my PCP leaving the practice. Do I follow her or stick with the practice? Also the post office delivered Zoe’s package to our house instead of to Germany!
• I’m currently shopping for things like a new belt for my big kid, a travel high chair for my baby, insoles and a brace for myself and a new frying pan.
• Every year I set a reading goal for myself. I haven’t completed my goal in maybe three years so I’m searching for ways to inspire more reading. I’m thinking about making a monthly list of options for myself to choose from. This month I’ve already started The Book of Alchemy for journaling inspiration. February could maybe be a romantic classic like a Jane Austen novel. Springtime could be something whimsical. A beach read and a memoir for summer. Spooky things in the fall like Frankenstein (which I never finished last October).
• I get excited about long naps, completed journal pages, clean floors, new recipes that turn out great, storytime, watching Seinfeld in the evening.
• My heart wants to go to PR, but my head says Lincoln won’t sleep and I’ll be fried.
• My days are one long endless saga. Lincoln’s longest stretch of sleep is around 5-7 hours. That’s when I’m doing dinner dishes, spending the last of the evening with Lici, doing laundry, tidying, catching up on things, showering, vegging and getting ready for bed. I sleep a couple hours then he wakes. I sleep a couple hours, then he wakes. There’s something about the dark quiet hallway between our bedrooms, that space when I have one hand on his doorknob quietly shutting it, and one hand on my doorknob opening the door back to my sleep haven. Therein lies an endlessness. The day does not end. It’s simply one long continuous loop.
• This is both the most mundane my life has felt and mentally stable I think I’ve ever been! There’s alot of joy to be found in this season and if I’m still I can catch it all.