Reboot

Monday we start school again; today – Saturday – I’m sitting at a café where I just dumped a 12-oz Americano coffee all down my front left side: sweater, wrap, dress, jeans, soaked in now-cold coffee. An inauspicious beginning to the time I’ve been planning to spend preparing for going back to school.

This morning over breakfast my father in law said contemplatively, “vacations always end, but then so will the school year.”

“That’s the thing – ” I suddenly realized: “I never felt like last year ever ended.”

It’s been a long, stressful slog, was 2022.

I’m here to try to strategise for 2023 – how to get through the year not just in survival mode, not just scrabbling, not gasping for breath and dog-paddling, but swimming, with a sense of direction and purpose, with an end in sight.

January is supposed to be a time for new beginnings, and I want to “begin with the end in mind.” I need to find a way to do this more methodically and proactively, not just reacting, not just gritting my teeth to get through the day, the week.