Dear 2014, I am ready for you!

I honestly can’t remember beginning another year as optimistically as I have this one. Last year started off as almost a lost cause, which really was an anomaly for me. But even years before that didn’t seem to ring in with as much enthusiasm as this one has.

My editing/proofreading work has been more plentiful and fruitful these past couple months than it ever has before, which is something for which I am beyond grateful. Knowing that I’m bringing in some steady cash right now and covering a number of our bills each month again is a heady feeling. This helps lift some weights off my shoulders immensely. Unfortunately freelance work is never exactly guaranteed or even that steady, but I’m working hard right now to save up everything I can while my plate of work hours is full.

Speaking of my editing/proofreading work, I think it is the exact job for which I was made. I have never been able to answer the question “What’s your dream job?” because I just never had one before. But now I think I do. And I am SO incredibly lucky that it involves me sitting at our dining room table with a jar of fresh-cut flowers and pictures of our family sprucing up my “office” and the Goonies running around behind me filling the house with the music of their play. Not to mention I can take it with me if I need to, which helps extend vacations for as long as I want.

We are actually starting to plan some work on our house again, a subject which had become almost taboo around here because it was just so much of a black hole to even try to picture. But now we have time frames and ideas and excitement and can almost feel the end result. And that money I’m saving up right now will all be plowed back into our little Money Pit to FINALLY  get this crap done.

I also have a couple, not resolutions really, but maybe hopes? I want to retrain my piano fingers so I can get back to playing and teach the girls. I would love to learn how to play the guitar, too, so we’ll see if I get up the mojo to actually take some lessons. That thing called “time” comes into play for both of these, though, something of which I always seem to run out these days.

And the girls are just at incredible ages right now. Watching the 2 of them run through this house playing with each other is so heart-warming. Never mind that sometimes it involves one crying from something the other one did or 18,000 bumps on the head for Lana every day or Della often coming to sit in the dining room just to “watch me work”. I still get to be home with them to witness all of that, and there is nothing I want more.

So you see, 2014 just feels good. Like a great cup of coffee with my favorite creamer in the middle of this miserable winter. Or putting on my favorite pair of jeans after wearing my black WAC uniform all morning. Or the happiness I will feel when I get to take the girls for a walk or run outside again.

2014 feels like a reassuring hug wrapped tightly around our little family. And that makes me so very, very happy.