A few years ago, my wife started this project of creating a vision board at the start of each year. She pages through magazines, grabbing phrases and images and ideas, collages them together and mounts it in her office. Just above her computer, it sits there as a reminder of where she hopes the year goes.
I don’t do it, but it’s fascinating to me, to see how they have changed over the last few years.
It’s almost over. An exhausting, challenging, wide-ranging year that felt like it was trying to kill me with all kinds of great things coming at me constantly.
A year that saw me become the chief technology office of my college, that saw me take our weekend photojournalism workshop on the road, that saw me take over, temporarily, as executive director of an association I hold dear, that saw me head to Brazil with students to cover the Paralympics, that saw my return to rally competition and commit to building a new road rally program here in Georgia. A year that saw me adopt a daughter and then send her off to college, a year that saw my step-son dual-enroll at our state’s flagship university and watch both of them flourish.
A year that reinforced my belief that surrounding yourself with good people is just critical, a year that reminded me how good I have it in that area.
It was also a year that scared the hell out of me. Blooms in December are not normal, so much of what’s happening around us isn’t normal. Remember those 1980’s bumper stickers that asked, “Why Be Normal?”
Now I have an answer.
As this year winds down, I’m feeling the length of it. I keep thinking things will slow down but they don’t, the last twelve months were 20-late-and-checkpoint-in-sight all day, every day. The home office suffered but today I got a chance to try and make sense of it. There are about 50 books sitting on shelves and stands that I have acquired and not cracked open, that needs to get remedied. Soon.
My wife and I are different people. She loves to cook, I love to entertain. She knows how much I enjoy having a porch full of people laughing and sharing stories, so to help she found these plastic plates that hold a drink in the center.
Can’t wait …
It’s a long standing tradition in my family, Christmas means Grandma Johnson’s Christmas Cake. She passed away almost a quarter century ago, yet my siblings and I still make her cake. My kids ask for it, and for our delayed ceelebration, I’m always happy to make it.
Yarn bombing is a thing here.
Spent part of the day out on the road, mapping out a rally route, pausing where necessary to find the next twist to turn on to. Little pink church with meters and AC units tucked in.
