It’s quarter to one in the morning on the second day of a new year and I’m too restless to sleep. I’ve been staring at my computer for three hours, give or take, minus a ten minute attempt to fall asleep alongside Vinnie. The program I use to edit photographs has been unresponsive all night.

In the living room, the Christmas tree is lit. A couple of balloons from New Years Eve linger along the ceiling beside it.

I’ll start the deconstruction process tomorrow, or the next day. I’ll open the colorful boxes we use each year for my children’s Christmas Eve pajamas and fill them with the sentimental, but not fragile, ornaments, probably in haste and with coffee in my hand. I’ll be more careful with the blown glass from Italy or the aging handiwork from my children’s past holidays.

I’ll lug up the bins from the basement, find room in them for my growing Christmas tree collection, for the manger scene, the tree skirt and stockings, the wreaths.

Then the untwisting of tangles of lights, as hard, dead, pine needles rain down over my head and onto the floor.

Into the bins, all of it, sealed as though it never even happened. As though, I’m only exhausted from routine and regular life, and not from all of this year end holiday rush, rush, rush….

And then we turn the page.

 
It’s the dark, nascent hours of January 2nd, and when the world wakes up, it will be awash with the (predictable) tide of good intentions, a wave of new lifestyle choices, diet changes and gym memberships, all carrying us toward us being our best possible selves.

Because, who we were today, or for the past twelve months…not quite thin enough, not happy enough, not good enough.  

I’m not sure why, but I’ve never been one to participate in resolutions. (Perhaps, I’ve always hated being told what to do, even by myself?)

I want to barrel through this month of resolutions and declarations, fingers in my ears and eyes closed, just get me to the other side of the fads and settled back into something genuine.

 

I wonder if after six months of Enneagram introspection, it’s possible that, because the core of a two is a feeling of being unloveable unless you’re actively giving…that telling myself that I am not good enough (unless) or I could be doing so much better (if only), would be a little devastating.

I’m over feeling less than, or that I’m not good enough, as I am.

Part of the whole deconstruction process I’ve been working on, this journey through self-acceptance and growth, has been exactly the opposite of this, and in direct opposition to any sort of cliche, quick fix mentality.  Accepting that I’m sufficient and worthwhile, regardless of what I do for anyone else (or anything that I can DO at all), has to be enough for me. Every day. 

There are always things that are going to be works-in-progress in my life and there are some personal things I need to gradually let go. But, these aren’t even resolutions. They’re simply the evolution of me, becoming who I’ll be next year at this time, and the year after that.

 

It’s after three now, Lightroom still isn’t cooperating. I look up from the laptop to the twinkling tree. Over the past weeks, it has changed shape and lost it’s fresh scent. It’s sagging ever-so-slightly downward, the natural progression of things, tired branches weighed down by collections of ornaments. Still, through my blurred contactless vision, the white lights make it like it’s glowing with snow.

It’s beautiful. Peaceful.

I don’t even think I paused to appreciate it this much at all the whole month it was here. 

Maybe the bins can wait.