A year of standing still.

I've been thinking of writing a New Year's post all day, but I've been working on a new project that is not quite ready for unveiling. Once it is, I think you'll like it.

I like the new year and the idea of blank surfaces and new beginnings. I like taking stock and checking my pockets. Possibly the biggest event of the year is the fact that the kids and I didn't go anywhere. This has not happened for eight years, to the best of my knowledge. There were the years of six months of travel, each and every year, packing up and unpacking. There were the years of month-long trips with a dozen people in an RV. But this year (other than a brief trip to central Thailand for Isaac and I) we have not left our little brown house. It seems unbelievable.

It also seems unbelievable that I stood on my street watching the fireworks last year with the two little boys in bed and the littlest one tucked away in my belly. This year I watched with three little boys tucked in bed. (Leafy really isn't so little anymore, but he loses his head when he gets tired and starts wailing for home and his pillow.) Isaac has been with us forever, hasn't he?

It has been a good year of making a home, and a difficult year also. Chinua was away from us for ten weeks this year. We built a meditation center. I published some books. Everyone kept growing. We had Miriam here, and Abby, and Brendan and Leaf for a little while. We deepened new friendships, and I have forged on despite fear of new places, new friends, fear of putting myself forward.

I look forward to what God will do in the new year, I want to dive straight in. I do have a few resolutions. None of them are desperate, because I know I've been doing my best. But I want to journal more, in a real journal, in private. I want to blog more. I want to publish or find a publisher for this novel. I want to draw more, to keep exercising. You know, the regular stuff.

What about you? Do you have any thoughts for your new year?