2011

I wish I could say 2011 was a good year for me.

There were good moments, definitely. I made new friends, started doing something exciting, went places.

But there were lows too. This year I was sad a lot, I was tired a lot, I lost a lot.

Mostly I was just trying to catch up with life as it happened, trying to deal with the bruises that came with the tumbles, trying -- at times, almost failing -- to pick myself up and start running again.

It's funny: my sister keeps thinking of that line in Og Mandino's Credenda that describes life as a blink of an eye between two eternities. I keep thinking of another line from the same source: "Be jealous of your time, since it is your greatest treasure."

I think of all the time I could have spent with loved ones, all the time I spent on making a living instead of making a life, all the time I could have spent making myself and other people happy. The worst thing I can do now, though, is to spend all the time I have left grieving for time I had lost, and for things that cannot be changed.

Someday I want to look back on my 2011 as the wind that blew through my life, throwing all its little pieces up to the air and causing them to fall where they should have been all along. I think I will look back someday and realize that everything that happened this year -- all the good things, all the bad things -- were things that I needed to reorient my life and remind me of my priorities. If I come out of this wiser, if everything I learned makes me a better person, then perhaps 2011 was worth it.