I am a girl who likes lists. I also like planning. The end of the year gives me both. The illusion that things will change because I choose to, the hope that I will be able to.

2013 was a banner year in good and bad. I believe that it has been a crazy, inspired, heartbreaking, lovely, devastating, 364 days so far, and I have become a different person because of it. Decisions I’ve made and the decisions of people around me have molded me into something else than the person I was before it. I’m still a little broken, a little guarded. I have issues that if I’m not careful, I’ll carry with me forever.

I have also learned to smile more, to laugh more loudly. I have experienced the happiness of so many simple things. Of just being. Of a heart that is so big that you feel overwhelmed by the sheer goodness of it. Of hands so open to others, you’d think it’s insane.

I am facing 2014 with a heart that’s new. The battered, bruised, scarred clump of muscle reborn. Ready.

My list to accomplish this 2014 is strangely simple. I want to stay happy. That’s it. How I’m going to do that, is a little more complicated. But I sure as heck will try my best.

And I am happy to have the best people around me to do it.

Thanks and goodbye 2013. It was nice to know you. Don’t come back okay?

And honestly, as they said about that “You can’t come home again.” It kind of felt like that.

And that’s not a bad thing.

Last night, I went to my old department’s Christmas party, after being absent from shindigs, get togethers and the like for about 4-odd years. Things have changed significantly. I’m incredibly proud to say that a lot of my friends have moved up and to better things. People have found love, people have lost the same. We’re all different people from the Marketing of my past, and it was good.

I don’t think I’m explaining this how I want to.

I guess all I’m trying to say is, that I’m happy I got to go. Be with the friends that I’ve loved since I stepped through those doors in 2007. Drink (and not to the point of needing to get dragged away from the joint). Make inappropriate jokes. Hug the people I’ve missed like crazy. I might not have socialized enough to my liking because I am old and get tired at 9 pm, but I’m glad I still had these people in my life.

So far, this Christmas is looking good.

Thank you.

 

 

From when I heard it to now, to every single day: