Coming to Terms…with 2008

At the end of December 2007, I happened upon an idea for a New Years post that really appealed to me. It spoke to the basic structure of my being—which is to be more inclined to scrutinize the past than charge into the future. I don't highly recommend this as the best way to conduct one's life…it simply is what I do. What I cannot help doing, evidently.

Still, examining history can prove quite interesting, and can be a pretty accurate indicator of where one in fact will be heading, in spite of whatever resolutions one might invent in anticipation of a brand new set of 365 days.

So, following is a record of the first line (or two) from my first post of each month of 2008 here at Coming to Terms. (And some parenthetical commentary.) Let's see what kind of story this will tell…

January~~Here we are, already more than a week into the new year. I SO have not been feeling like writing. (But unfortunately for you, dear reader, I have decided to go ahead and write…nothing… anyway.)

February~~Hi Dad!
I got to thinking about you today. It is a day for thinking about you. (February will always begin, now, with the anniversary of that loss.)

March~~You all knew I'd have something to say on this subject, didn't you....?
Dubya is possibly the lamest duck in the history of the genre. (Was there ever a more fertile topic than the eight-year serial drama of our soon-to-be-ex bungler-in-chief?)

April~~Things are getting a little funky around the old homestead…
I think the general population is starting to get the fact that we are indeed in a recession. (And, of course, I'm never more than a heartbeat away from stressing out about "living the dream"…)

May~~You might remember the gist of my earlier post being that if I want to do anything at all, I have to just go for it.
At this time, I'm proud to announce that I am going to apply that piece of my personal motivational philosophy to the ensemble blog I suggested last month. (The birth of "Women On…" which has, unfortunately, become more like "Lisa On…" **sigh**)

July~~Today is Independence Day. The day we Americans celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence—our first step toward becoming a sovereign nation. (Wouldn't be my blog without a good old fashioned political rant or two…)

August~~I've written in this space previously about my spiritual agnosticism. I'm not an atheist. I believe there exists a spiritual plane to which we are intimately connected, and about which we know almost nothing. (…and another chapter in "An Agnostic's Quest for the Meaning of Life.")

September~~Fall has slammed down like a guillotine. Officially, Autumn does not start for almost three more weeks, but the season is here now and seems disinclined to take "no" for an answer. (Fall always inspires the more poetic side of my nature…)

October~~Funny how no one has been posting much. AOL tells us they're going to be closing their doors in 30 days, and we all just…abandon ship. (Lest we forget the final betrayal of AO-Hell…)

November~~Ahhhh…the time change! I can't say I'm going to love that it will be getting dark at 5:00, but I think I hate getting up in the dark more than just about anything. (Already revving up to hate winter…)

December~~This is turning out to be about the fastest Holiday season on record. I'm still trying to figure out what happened to August, and here it is, less than three weeks until Christmas. (And the annual scramble to try to wring something meaningful out of the Christmas season before it slips out of my hands.)

Hard to put in a nutshell what this all says about my 2008. No huge traumas; no instances of life grabbing me by the throat and beating a new lesson into me—which, these days, seems to be the only way I learn anything. (You can teach an old dog new tricks, but it ain't easy…) Maybe it was just a year of…having found my bearings. A year of coming back, of no longer being overwhelmed by the challenges I had set before myself.

Perhaps life now, and going forward, is more apt to be a mingling of the best aspects of what I was before (an under-challenged semi-retired introvert) and what I am now (an overwhelmed workaholic entrepreneur.)

And that isn't half bad.