I spent a couple hours today (while I should have been working), reading the archives of my blog. I realize that it was an exercise in vanity, but it was fascinating to read the entries from the beginning, to see where I was almost a year ago, what I was feeling then, what my writing style looked like and to compare that with where I am now. I spent a lot last spring complaining in writing about my job, my life and the struggles I faced, which I took far too seriously. Yesterday, if asked, I would have said that I haven’t changed much in the last year, but after today’s blog self-reflection, I realize that I have changed, quite a lot. My attitude towards life has gotten increasingly relaxed. I don’t take setbacks as seriously, and my level of trust that this life will be good has increased dramatically.

Just as the year was refreshing itself four weeks ago, my mom forwarded me an email. It was a page long essay from a woman who channels (I realize I may have lost some of you when I typed the word “channel.” Stay with me if you can). It revolved around the energy of 2006, and said it was a year of creation. That it was the year of “what you see is what you get,” meaning that if you thought positively and took an active role in envisioning a positive, vibrant, happy life for yourself, that that would be what you’d have. I’ve reread this email 8 or 9 times since I got it. If it had been a letter printed on paper, the creases would be threatening to tear from the folding and unfolding. Every night as I go to sleep, I imagine the life I want to create for myself, and I go to sleep with those images in my head.

After I lost the morning to archive exploration, I met a friend for lunch. We used to work together and ate lunch together everyday for almost two years. In a lot of ways, we are on similar paths, our lives reflecting matching struggles and challenges back at each other, thankfully not always at the same time. We ate, and talked, and I felt my heart relax a little in the warmth of the conversation (as well as the sun, shining outside). We talked about where we are now, and where we once were, and relished the changes we have wrought in our lives. I am so grateful to be where I am now, and to be moving forward in time, not back.