2007: Not a Review
Dec. 31st, 2007 07:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lauraanne_gilmanSome people love Christmas, or the Fourth of July, or their birthday... I love New Year's Eve. No matter how you celebrate it -- surrounded by thousands of strangers or gathered with only your best-beloved -- it's a powerful, simple celebration of change and survival and contemplation and anticipation.
I tend not to do year-end reviews for much the same reason I don't do year-end word counts: too much work to go back and pick up every wonderful or horrible thing that happened within a specific 12-month period. But overall, 2007 was:
A year of loss -- there were friends gone too suddenly too soon, political ideals dashed, and personal dreams withered. Plans that had to be scrapped, and ideas that went nowhere.
A year of growth -- with new and returning friends, new dreams, new understandings and insights both personal and professional. Some major goals were achieved, and expectation-bars raised.
I turned 40 and discovered it was a landmark I had been waiting for, not dreading. I traveled places I had never been, met people and saw things I had never encountered before, and stretched myself further, physically and emotionally, than I thought I could go. I wrote, in both established worlds and new ones, and read and danced and painted, cooked and learned and laughed, and did almost everything I set my mind to, even when plans changed in mid-motion.
2008 enters with a heap o' changes for me, all ones I'm anxiously looking forward to. New challenges, new friends and new experiences. I don't know which will be fabulous, and which will be 'we'll laugh about this later,' and which will become part of the story of my life that shapes me forever after. I'm sure that there will be some of them all.
Occasionally I hear people say "Next year has to be better!" No, it doesn't. It doesn't have to be worse, either. It's just another 12 months to do things in. Go, do.
And my wish for you all, as always, is that the best of the past year be the worst we face in the year to come!
And because I have no idea what sort of shape I will be in later [more due to travel and weather than overpartying], happy birthday to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ellen_datlow and the Kzin, and happy early birthday to quarkwiz and peggin!
I tend not to do year-end reviews for much the same reason I don't do year-end word counts: too much work to go back and pick up every wonderful or horrible thing that happened within a specific 12-month period. But overall, 2007 was:
A year of loss -- there were friends gone too suddenly too soon, political ideals dashed, and personal dreams withered. Plans that had to be scrapped, and ideas that went nowhere.
A year of growth -- with new and returning friends, new dreams, new understandings and insights both personal and professional. Some major goals were achieved, and expectation-bars raised.
I turned 40 and discovered it was a landmark I had been waiting for, not dreading. I traveled places I had never been, met people and saw things I had never encountered before, and stretched myself further, physically and emotionally, than I thought I could go. I wrote, in both established worlds and new ones, and read and danced and painted, cooked and learned and laughed, and did almost everything I set my mind to, even when plans changed in mid-motion.
2008 enters with a heap o' changes for me, all ones I'm anxiously looking forward to. New challenges, new friends and new experiences. I don't know which will be fabulous, and which will be 'we'll laugh about this later,' and which will become part of the story of my life that shapes me forever after. I'm sure that there will be some of them all.
Occasionally I hear people say "Next year has to be better!" No, it doesn't. It doesn't have to be worse, either. It's just another 12 months to do things in. Go, do.
And my wish for you all, as always, is that the best of the past year be the worst we face in the year to come!
And because I have no idea what sort of shape I will be in later [more due to travel and weather than overpartying], happy birthday to
ellen_datlow and the Kzin, and happy early birthday to quarkwiz and peggin!
