Anticipation

Selfie in a snow-covered birch tree

Heard this Carly Simon number on the long drive back to Madison, and it felt somehow apt for starting the new year:

We can never know about the days to come
But we think about them anyway
And I wonder if I'm really with you now
Or just chasing after some finer day

Anticipation, Anticipation
Is making me late
Is keeping me waiting

I've spent a lot of time in my life anticipating something or someone, and although a little anticipation is healthy, to focus on what might happen rather than what is happening is mostly a recipe for not getting to fully enjoy the life that's right in front of me:

Anticipation, Anticipation
Is making me late
Is keeping me waiting

Yes it is, Carly. And I resolve to do less anticipating and more being in 2015...

This is the New Year

I heard this song a while back on an episode of Glee, and it seems a fitting way to mark the first day of a new year:

Another year you made a promise
Another chance to turn it all around
And do not save this for tomorrow
Embrace the past and you can live for now
And I will give the world to you

I'm feeling a lot of things with a new year on the horizon: open, grateful, raw, sad, scared, empowered, strong. A lot of the same things I felt in 2013. But last year, I had times when I didn't say or do what I really felt, didn't write down what I need to document, didn't use the full range of my voice:

Speak louder than the words before you
And give them meaning no one else has found
The role we play is so important
We are the voices of the underground
And I will give the world to you

Say everything you've always wanted
Be not afraid of who you really are
'Cause in the end we have each other
And that's at least one thing worth living for
And I will give the world to you

This year I'm going to try to do more of those things I'm scared of and just see where it leads. Try not to attach to the prospect of someone giving the world to me, and focus instead, on giving myself to the world:

This is the new year
A new beginning
You made a promise
You are the brightest
We are the voices
This is the new year
We are the voices
This is the new year...