01 January, 2013

2012 - A LOOK BACK

I started this blog on January 1, 2008. I wrote 360 entries that year - almost one for every day, which was of course the original intention for the blog and the inspiration for its title: that I would write a little bit each day.

This year, I wrote 42 entries. An average of 3.5 blog posts per month, writing not even once a week. And the funny thing is that this past year was a year of huge transitions for me. A year where so many wonderful things worth writing about happened. Perhaps I was just so invested in living in the moment that I couldn't even step outside of myself for a few minutes to jot it all down.

A resolution for 2013? More writing.
But for now, as I've done each year, a look back at 2012...

We decided to make a big transition for our family: moving from NYC, where we lived and worked and enjoyed our friends for 10 years, to Maryland. It was a challenging transition but it was definitely the right choice for us. And it was a blessing to have a solid partner with whom to share the burden.

I start to learn about Peak Oil. I'm inspired by an 11-year-old to know where my food comes from. And I begin to connect with a cousin of mine who lives on the other side of the country, (bi-coastal kindred spirits).

My daughter turns two. We have a birthday party for her at which she is the only child - and she loves every second of having a room full of adults to dote on her. (Complete with a homemade Elmo cake!) I read a book called Animal Vegetable Miracle that creates a deep need in me to start our own garden and confirms our family's decision to move.

I continue to think about how I want to raise our daughter: what I want her to be exposed to and what kind of people I want her to have in her life.

We start our first vegetable garden. It will never look that nice and neat again.

To our city folk surprise, our plants in the garden start to grow! And actual vegetables start to appear. Our move to this new town gives me a luxurious amount of one-on-one time with my daughter... but it also gives me pains in my heart because I miss my friends in New York. Especially this one.

Six weeks later, our garden is going wild. Our 3 tomato plants have grown a few feet and our peppers actually look like peppers. It is truly amazing. I think about what it means to be rather than to seem.

I get a job teaching theater. And I love it. Within a few weeks I've already started to rethink how I talk about relationships in this all-girls school and I remember that humans are complicated. I strive to make each girl in my class feel comfortable with who she is.

I direct my first play at GFS and I feel very proud of how hard everyone worked on it. I get the best compliment I could've asked for from my student actors: "Ms. Waller took us seriously, so we took ourselves seriously."

I feel blessed with my abundance of good fortune.

There is a lot of buzz around the date 12.21.12 and although I am glad that the world did not end, I do believe it has begun to change. I feel grateful for the relationship that I have with my siblings, both the ones I grew up with and the ones that came with marriage.

My daughter continues to sing and it warms my heart. I get to be home for the holidays. My sister got hitched. I registered to run a 1/2 marathon (seriously?!). And I spent New Year's Eve with a man I truly adore, a man who believes we are more than just married but joined in spirit as well. Lucky, lucky me.