Reverb day 9: the bells

As you enter into the new year, what would you like to do/make/have/be more often? How will you bear witness and celebrate the tiny milestones? How will you respond on the occasions when your intentions do not come to pass?

Milestones. This year past has been full of them, and big ones at that. Tony’s graduation; my new job; my novel; moving house. If I’m honest, it’s all been pretty exhausting. It is, however, over. For the first time in years we both have a decent job, and neither of us is having to worry about money.

It’s so easy to pick a goal and, as one approaches it, as it suddenly looks like it’s going to happen, to persuade oneself that this wasn’t really what one meant, that actually one was going for that next mountain, never mind how high this one is. I want to begin this year with the assumption that I’m already where I need to be.

This year coming has one big milestone, which is my 30th birthday, and I’m resolved to devote the rest of the year to – well, to the rest of the year. I want to be in this year, not some ghost of the past that wants me to worry about something that’s long over and gone. I want to make the most of it. I want to start living as if I’ve nothing to wait for. I want to have a huge amount of fun, and I want to pay attention to everything that comes through.

I am planning plenty of rest into 2015. We are going to have our first foreign holiday since our honeymoon, yes, but I also want to make sure that I have at least two separate weeks where I book nothing in at all. I’d also like to get a retreat in there somewhere.

I want to be very present in 2015.

How do I do this? A chiming clock.

My office is opposite a church, and this church has a clock that strikes the quarters. I have made it a practice, every time I hear the chime, to stop. Just for a second, but it’s enough, to reconnect to the stillness within.

I’d like that at home, too. So that will be my Christmas present to myself, if nobody else gets me one. A clock that chimes.

Copy/pasted from elseweb, here are my less tangible wishes for 2015:

It is Advent, and so new year for me. I have wishes for the whole year to come…

Retreat. Holiday, actual foreign abroad holiday. Weeks of nothing. Another New Opportunity. Further adventures in mermaid twinning. One whopper of a birthday party. If I make a mistake, I make it a good one. I greet everything joyfully and with curiosity.