Closure.

When finding ourselves at a borderline, especially one dividing periods of time, some basic instinct encourages us - expects us, even - to reflect on what we are about to walk away from. It also makes us predict, organize, and set expectations for the new territory. So why deny it; let this last post of 2010 be an aggregate summary of the immediate periods of past and future.

Looking back, I'm glad things turned out the way they did, in every aspect. The calm is refreshing. Being able to stay in my head and not exhaust all energy for self management is a good change. Enjoying what I do, or most of what I do, is also welcome. Having the current combination of people around me. Defining my life less and less by the school I go to.  Acquiring things to look forward to.  The scaling up of some plans and the scaling down of some other plans. Adjusting expectations to suit reality and coming down to earth.  Growing up in more ways than was expected. This has been a good year, like a stabilizing force that was so lost for a long time but finally appeared out of some back corner from the attic of my mind: unexpected and pleasantly surprising.  Just as I thought I was never to see it again.

Looking forward is different this year because I don't feel the usual tendency to ask fanciful questions about large scale changes, about life-size projects (which are only within reach when I think them up out of insomnia; not when I go "out there" in the daytime). No, not for this year. Right now I would like to commit my life to not undergoing any major renovations, not for the next little while.  Everything is sort of where it should be, or at least it's all on the right track. And as all the pieces continue to evolve and develop finer details, I know I will be here to keep them in check and store them away in writing. All I wish is that they develop methodically and slowly this time around; and that my ability to deal with them remains unhindered by my tendency to spend energy not on doing so, but instead on embellishing and recording them.  I wish the balance that started to show this year continues into the next: more boldly, surely, and persistently, as I know it will.