Of all the years in my whole entire life, 2019 is the year that I’ve most often found myself telling someone, “It’s been a tough year.” But I’m going to miss 2019. The sad parts of a journal aren’t any less treasured memories than the happy parts. Each year is my story.
At the end of a weird year, I’m struck by how unique each life is. How unique each person is. How unique each day is. And I want to honor the uniqueness in you–your life, your person, your days. I don’t hope your 2019 journal was full of happy parts, I hope it was full of you parts. And I wish even more genuine you-days in your 2020.
I’m grateful to live in a world with such diverse, beautiful, real, colorful humans all around me.
I love excuses to celebrate. I don’t care what the day is, taking time to feel differently than you feel in the daily grind, taking time to look. Sometimes the roads feel different, people sound different, even the sky looks different just because it’s a special day. Well–they probably don’t, it’s just that special days remind us to look closer. To stop and realize and think and appreciate and celebrate all the color in this world.
Each new year, to me, is also a special opportunity, a ritualistic reminder, to reflect on who I am, who I’ve been, what I’ve done, what I do, what I want. The older I get, the more my mind goes in the new year to who I want to be every day, not just the things I want to have done eventually.
As I try to be who I want to be, I realize that sometimes that makes me seem Not-Peter to people who know me well. People get suspicious or just feel weird when you change. I noticed this year how I do this to other people, too. Little, inconsequential, why-would-I-even-notice changes that people make, I get a little weird about it, sometimes. That’s not fair. When you change more to who you want to be, you will seem a little fake, and you will feel a lot fake, and that is just the process. Just hang on tight.
I also learned this year that when it comes to who I am and what I want and all the New-Yearsy type reflections there are to reflect on, it is so important and so okay to be real about what you want. Really real.
So if I had one wish for my 2020 and for yours, it would be this: Be your REAL self this year. Even if it’s different and weird and feels not-quite-right for a while. And even if it’s not who others expect or want you to be. If you like cold weather, and someone says “ugh, this weather,” I wish that in your 2020 you won’t reply “ugh, yeah, I know!” I wish that you’ll actually be true to deep-down-you. That means letting yourself know about yourself, too.
I want to thank everyone who has read my blog in 2019. This has been a really fun and really surprising and really fulfilling journey for me. Thanks for coming along!
A year ago, I committed to publishing 5 blog posts each month in 2019, because I believe in the whole consistent baby steps thing. Here I am. I did it!
I hopefully imagined that I might double the number of readers from the year before. I didn’t expect to end up reaching ten times last year’s, but I’m there, and I feel excited and thankful and proud of it. A couple posts in particular caught on and made the rounds on social media and it was sweet to see lots of kind words and lots of people feeling encouraged. And I have a couple posts that aren’t even my favorites that seem to be helpful enough that every day they’re being shared all over places I don’t know. So I do feel good, like writing works. Consistency works.
But even more satisfying and exciting and heart-warming and every-good-feeling to me has been the people that I’ve heard have been touched in some way by something I’ve written this year. Encouraged. Inspired. Helped. Made to feel not alone. Honestly, getting to help just one person in some little way makes all the work–and it is work, sometimes–worth it.
My wish for my writing is that I can keep doing it, but do it more. This year, I’ve learned to really love writing as writing itself, not just as a method to do some good deed. I’m really happy when I write. I do hope, though, that I can keep writing and communicating with more and more people in ways that help people to feel hope, to feel not alone, and to remember that we’re all in this crazy thing called life together.
So honestly, thank you for all the reads and the shares, and especially for the kind words!
My wish for all my people’s 2020s! Be thoroughly, beautifully, strangely, bravely, whole-heartedly you!
Happy new year, my friends! Here’s to a 2020 full of colorful life!
Thank you, 2019, for a beautiful time.
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