This year was good to me.
It was. I can look back at January and realize that I had just started working at a school that wasn’t quite yet a school, making peanuts and generally being totally unsure of where I was going and what I was doing.
I’m still plenty unsure about where things are going, but I’m a lot more secure in my insecurities.
I buried a lot of insecurities this year. I have a generally older peer group, and 2013 is the year in which I owned being the youngest person in most of the circles I travel in. Yes, I’m 26. But I’m also a classroom teacher in one of the toughest markets I could have picked, good at what I do, and I can hold my own.
2013 wasn’t perfect. Many parts of it were tough, and scary. But I moved forward. We moved forward, Natalie Joy and the girls and I. And moving on to 2014, I’m taking the site’s tagline and turning it into a mantra.
I have the most incredible little family. They’re my everything and I am excited every day to see what they’re going to bring into my life. But what I forget from time to time is that I have incredible friends too, and they deserve more of my time. I’ll devote more time to pursuing the things I love and less to things that are passingly interesting or entertaining. I’m a nerd and a skeptic and an admirer of whimsy and my goal should be to enable all those things. And I truly, deeply love this city, and I want to learn so much more about it.
I start things. I make and make but things always seem a little less than done, or things are well on their way to being completed only to end up entirely not done. I build and write and draw and should do more of all three. I want to finish the things I love to make and to be more proud of the things I’ve made. I need to work on focus and prioritization and scheduling time for me. And I also need to recognize more often when things are done, and to take joy in completion.
I have stuff in my Moleskine that is worth reading, worth sharing. I have artwork kicking around that could be surfaced and posted. There are so many things I’m constantly psyched about and I should make more of an effort to put my work out there in the world, to put myself out there.
2013 was a solid year. A year that moved me closer to a lot of goals. 2014 is the year in which I stop looking towards when my goals are achieved and start looking to doing the things I love more in the moment, and making time rather than waiting to just find the time.
This is it. Love more. Make more. Share more.
See you in the new year, folks.
Paddle your own canoe,
Trevor
