dear 2013 // a year in review

Dear 2013,

Even though you’re technically gone, I still wanted to take a moment here to recognize you. To thank you for being such a big, challenging, joy-filled year for me. I am SO THANKFUL for all the adventures this year brought me. When I look through these pictures I get this crazy strong nostalgic feeling. Happy and sad and everything in between. Happy because you brought me so many significant memories, and sad because you’re gone for good.

I opened Dear Friend Shop. I can’t believe I got my act together and really did it, but I did! It proved to be fun, but also overwhelming for me. Since it’s not my full-time job, I haven’t spent as much time with it as I ultimately would have liked to {or more honestly, had the energy to}, but that’s okay because it just means I can work on it more in 2014. I think I’ve started to find my niche, and will use this new year to build on it and bring it alive in my creative work.

I visited Denver, a brand new-to-me city with the very best of my friends. This showed me how much my heart wants to see so much of the rest of this country. I want to see the world, I want to see everything!, but it was this trip that made me realize how much of the US I yearn to see. Oh my goodness, I want to see it all. It also showed me how much I love my friends. How much happiness I feel when I’m with them, and how much it means for me to find the time {and money} to see them. I’m really pretty terrible at keeping in touch {on the phone and email front}, but I am committed to making get-togethers happen, so this I will try for each and every year to come.

I left my old teaching job, and began a new one. This was probably the biggest and most significant change for me in 2013. It came upon out of the blue and challenged me to my core. It was both sad and exciting to leave, and honestly a little hard for me to transition, but I’m really coming into my own now, and I know it will just get better and better with time. I miss my old teaching friends {but can and do still get together with them} and am also starting to make new ones. I look forward to the day second grade feels as natural to me as first grade did– the curriculum part of it I’m still getting the hang of– but the kids are still as fabulously funny as ever. I can hardly wait to see how far they’ve come in June!

I have so many amazing people in my life. The photos above speak volumes to that. Zan, my sister, my parents, my extended family, Zan’s family, my friends. I love them all so much I could cry. How do you measure a year? In mighty, mighty love.

And! I turned 30. I feel… kind of different? Not really different at all? Some days I feel older. But mostly, I feel the same. My eyes have been opened to how lucky I am. How much I have and see and do. How blessed I have been with my experiences and also with my sense of appreciation. I hope I never lose sight of that. I want to be grateful until forever. And long after forever, too.

Oh, life, I can’t help but think– it really is so amazing.

Here’s to the good, here’s to the better, here’s to the best.

Cheers to you, 2013. So long, sweet memories.