Welcome 2014

    
Welcome 2014. Usually on New Years I come up with a single word which is supposed to be my guiding concept for the coming year. I have been having difficulty finding my "word" for this year, but thought perhaps I could work it out by writing my way to the "word". It is another one of those times when I am in transition mode, something I have done pretty frequently, and with so much uncertainty, the "word" for this year has so far escaped me.
     Part of the reason I am in this strange place is that I have accepted a new kind of position that will start in a couple of weeks. I will be wading into the unfamiliar territory of a research assistant at the Social Research Center in Ann Arbor. This is a part-time gig that will allow me to both work a "real job" and continue to work from home on my writing and editing projects. I am hoping that this new job will open some doors and help me to focus on my field of study, Social Sciences.
      So now I am facing the dreaded hour long commute - which is daunting in the mitten in January and February (and sometimes March and April), but is still not as bad as the hour and a half to two hours my boyfriend faces each way every day. That fact brings me to another undertaking for 2014, getting our house projects completed so that we could put it on the market and move closer to his work, if that is what we decide to do. This is no small task for many reasons, and while I am looking forward to getting the house in order and updated, these kinds of things require a lot of time and effort - always. Handy-man type projects always take longer and cost more than I think when I start them, and often, we wait until things have to be done before we face them.
     There are more things in the house that need to be done than we can easily afford, and one thing almost always leads to something else. Here is an example: We need a new fridge. The one we have I bought in 1985 while pregnant with Nick. The ice maker is kaput, and for some reason, the paint has decided it is time to peel off and fall on my floors. It still runs very well, and things stay nice and cold inside, but I know it is simply a matter of time before it gives up. So my boyfriend and I went shopping and picked out the one that we want – really beautiful French door model. The problem is that no matter how we have measured it, it will not fit through the doorways so that we can get it into the kitchen. Well… we also need to replace all the windows in the house (and should have done so 15 years ago) and part of that project is that we want to put in a door-wall from the kitchen to the deck – which would also allow us to get the new fridge into the house. So now, in order to get a new fridge, we need to tear a huge hole in the back of the house and put in the sliding door so we have an opening large enough for the new fridge to fit in. Oh – and the whole kitchen needs to be painted since we have had a new chunk of ceiling since about 2008 which is naked above the table and the paint is beginning to wear off the cabinets, and… and… and… One thing leads to another.
     So I have been thinking about words like ‘projects’ or ‘completion’ or ‘execution’, but now I am thinking about "accomplishment" as my word for 2014. I am thinking that I should probably look at each small part of a project I get done as an accomplishment which will lead me toward the larger completion. In thinking about this I have also realized that I have often failed to acknowledge my accomplishments, no matter how big or how small. So this year, dear 2014, I will stop and acknowledge my accomplishments, no matter how small, in my quest for larger project completions. There. I just finished my first blog post for 2014. Well done, me.