Holiday Hangover

Taking down Christmas brings a mix of emotions for me. There are feelings of excitement for the New Year and a pang of disappointment and restlessness for a year passed and things not accomplished.

I am the person that loves to put it up a month before hand, but can’t stand to have Christmas cluttering the last week of December. You see in my mind Christmas is the end of the year and the last week leading up to New Years is a time for reflection  of the previous year and planning for the year to come. As I sit here jotting these notes down on my iPhone I start to spiral into my thoughts. I look around and I see Christmas decorations half torn down, lunch that needs to be cleaned up, and I’ve got work to do. And suddenly realize that the chaos I see around me mirrors some of my internal chaos.

I’ve just sent the kids upstairs for a few moments of quiet time, yet  I don’t feel quiet at all. Quite the opposite actually. My mind keeps racing and I can’t get it to stop. I am thinking about the condition of my house and realize it is most often the condition of my heart as well– busy, cluttered, and distracted.  I start evaluating the other areas of my life and realize this is how I tend to do life. So much unbridled intensity and passion. I get overwhelmed, and burn out. I try to do too much at once and forget that life is not a sprint, but is instead a marathon. That any and all things worth having are going to take patience, hard work, and consistency.

As I look to this next year I am focusing on getting organized, and not necessarily in the sense that everything would have its place and that my house would be spotless, but instead am focusing on organizing my private world. Taking an honest inventory of what and who are important in my life.  I want to declutter. Trim the fat.

I don’t want to be sitting here a year from now with the same regrets. One of the things I value about many of the people I look up to is their ability to make the necessary changes. They aren’t afraid to abandon the safety of what is comfortable for the possibility of the unknown. So here is to seeing what’s broke and vowing to fix it. I may not have all of the answers, but I have a place to start…and that’s something.