Ending and beginning and somewhere else

Well I am facing a 7-minute wait until my thirty-second (32nd) birthday. I haven't really thought at all about my birthday.

The year ends with this week, I am facing forward into a new year.

I just finished my last drawing class for the year. I am looking back at one year of running the weekly life drawing class at CoCoA, which has been a success, and which I end with the class being in better shape than when I took over.

I am resigning from CoCoA due to some changes in my life that will cause fewer evenings to be free, so I need to step away from other evening responsibilities. January will mark my last official month as the assistant director.

I will miss the relationships I have built over the past year. I wish I could stay as engaged with folks from class as I want to, but I know that will not be a realistic possibility.

My drawing has improved significantly this year and the prospect of not committing a 3-hour window of time every week to drawing feels discouraging. I know I will regress without constant practice.

I have a friend who has just finalized a divorce in the past week, seeing the end of a 6 (or so) year marriage.

I will be redefining my business pretty dramatically in the new year, the details of which I cannot yet divulge.

This coming year will mark 10 years of marriage, which is going well - but I think could certainly stand more of my attention.

My oldest daughter will be 6 in less than a month. I have a brand new baby daughter and a son in the middle who has more energy than all of the rest of us combined.

Our country feels less familiar to me as I look forward into the new year. People seem to think less and less alike, and what feels comfortable and safe is being challenged and upset left and right. Politics are so crazy and messed up right now I don't know how to feel from day to day.

I feel ready to see new things, I feel mostly unafraid of what I don't know. I feel happy for blessings in my life, my family, my church. I feel sad for friends who I know are tired and hurting right now.

I long for close friends who will reach out and touch me and tell me they love me and laugh and cry with me.

I want to be better to my family. To spend more time with my kids, to invest more in blessing Nancy and telling her how wonderful she is.

I want to spend less time investing in business and more time investing in people.

Hey, look at that, I'm 32 now...