January 2023

I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions, I’ve never been, but I am big on taking advantage of milestones. Whether they’re big or small, whether they’re frequent or infrequent, milestones give us an opportunity to reflect. It’s an opportunity to look back at where we’ve been. It’s an opportunity to look forward to where we want to go. And so, just like every other year, I’m using this opportunity to think about what has led me to where I am right now and where I want to go moving forward.

I have to be completely honest with you, looking back this year has been unlike any other year. It’s a little bit weird, or maybe cereal is the word I’m looking for.

So often, when I arrive at this time of year, I find myself thinking about all of the things that I want to improve in the next 12 months. It tends to be a rather long list. What can I say? I’m rather ambitious and thirst for change! No, in some ways this year is exactly the same as the past years. There are things that I would like to accomplish in the coming year. There are things that I would like to do and adjustments I would like to make in the coming year. However, this year feels so unlike past years. It feels so much more like connecting with an old friend and much less like trying to fit a square pack into a round hole.

There were, of course, the challenges that came to be after 2020. However, for us the year is leading up to 2020 came with their challenges as well. Having just moved to the United States after living in Japan for 10 years, this was an entirely new way of living in a place we had never so much as visited before. And so, it was very much like breaking in a new pair of shoes. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but figured the work would likely be worth it in the end. This type of thing takes time and work, which we were both very well aware of. We did our best to find and do things that would help us adapt to this new environment; to this new lifestyle. And we enjoyed ourselves! To say that we didn’t, would be selling ourselves short. The thing is, just because you enjoy a thing, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s what you want. Which is such an interesting comment and may be a little bit confusing, concept. Nonetheless, things never felt quite right.

By the time New Year’s Eve 2019 rolls around it had become pretty obvious that some adjustments needed to be made. And what a better time than the biggest milestone of the year! So as we ring in 2020, we made the decision that we were going to make this year our year; we were going to get 2020 our all.

Obviously you know what happens next.

Now, I’m not gonna go into all the details. I think we’ve all had enough recap of 2020 and the year’s following it. What I will say is this, 2020 was a very illuminating year. There are any number of reasons that this could have been the case. For us, it was a stripping away of all the distractions and excess. This needed glaringly obvious what actually worked for us in this new lifestyle and what didn’t.

With this not so new, but now clearly defined, discovery on our hands we knew that we needed to do something. So we spent the next however long it was trying to figure out what exactly that meant. We made a long list of changes which ultimately led us to moving to Orlando.

Looking back, the interesting thing about this moment in time is that all of the changes we made, even the really small ones, all felt right. Even after moving out of our house and into a crappy apartment that smelled like cigarette smoke, it’s still felt better then where we had come from. It felt more right. It felt more us. Then, when we arrived in Orlando, it was like slipping into a comfortable pair of shoes. So much about living and being here was what we knew we already loved. It’s what we never wanted to move away from, but knew we had to 10 years ago.

This made our move, if I’m being completely honest with you, not feel like much of a move at all. It felt like we were just coming home. Which is the oddest feeling. Especially because we weren’t moving to a place we’d ever lived before. Although, unlike Minnesota, we had visited this place before. So we need to expect.

This all leads us to right now. We moved to Florida in April and so it’s been a good number of months since we arrived here. We’ve had our opportunity to settle in, whatever that means, and we’ve established ourselves. No, with the New Year, it’s time to think about where we’ve been and where we’re going. And I have to say, this is the 1st year in a very long time that I don’t feel heavy right at the start. I feel like my feet are underneath me and while I realize that that might not remain the case for the duration of the year, thinks change, it feels like a good place to start.