Before we all left for the holidays, I signed up for The January Cure. For a while there I even considered participating, maybe blogging about the whole thing. And then I forgot all about it.
My first email arrived yesterday, with the first assignment: make a list of the things that need to be fixed, cleaned, and organized in each room of your house. But after a hectic Christmas and an even more hectic few months, I can’t say that the Cure looked as good in my inbox as I thought it might.
Resolutions? Sure. Plans? Yes. Dreams? Always. But right now I’m not feeling very good about checklists.
2013 was so busy, I’m left with the desire to both slow down and speed up — to focus. Focus on reading, focus on writing, focus on my health and my happiness, and focus on making this the best year yet. That doesn’t mean anything will really ease up — I’m sure I’ll still be busy. I just want to be more deliberate about the things I choose to take up the time. And, most of all, I want to be more deliberate about balancing the things that nurture my ambition with the things that nurture my soul.
I want to balance present Laicie with future Laicie, and I want to worry about the little things less.
So that piece of trim by the door that’s come undone? It can wait. The closets? They’ll get there eventually. The holiday weight? It’ll come off. But none of it has to happen this month.
January is a new start. It’s beautiful, and hopeful, and I love the freshness of it, that everything has been scrubbed clean. But that freshness will fade, and the life that takes its place won’t be perfect. It will be ours, with mistakes made and lessons learned, and it will be better every day. We will be better every day, because a lot of what makes us better will be the dirt that takes the place of the clean.
A lot of what makes life worth living rises from that dirt — just look at this guy. So who wants to be perfect? I’d so much rather be surprised.
