I started this draft two weeks before Christmas, and here we are, almost done with January and I’m still fiddling with it. Perhaps not the best start to blogging in 2018, or is it?

Having spent the majority of my life functioning as a Type A, achiever sort of personality, I have always struggled with the concept of ‘earning’ my downtime. And since the nature of my work naturally leaves me with slower seasons, I find myself grappling with this issue on a regular basis. So to me, January never really feels like the beginning of a new year, but rather, as the extended pause after one season has ended and before the next one begins. I like this time. I look forward to it. And yet, I do always struggle with it. But, perhaps, and likely because of last year, I find myself struggling less forcefully against the lull this year, and I am hopeful this means I am growing more comfortable with ebbs and seasons in general. I think that is going to be one of my focuses in 2018- trying to continue to be present and to approach everything, including myself with more curiosity than judgement.

But this place is, naturally a product of everything leading up to it, so how did 2017 get me here?

Y’all, 2017 was a ride. December 2016 I was waking up at 4 every morning in order to get a shower and breakfast without having to see either of my roommates and make it to work by 7:30 so that I could get all the truffles in their pretty boxes with bows and handwritten cards before the shop opened at 10. At 10 I would take all those pretty orders to the back room and spend the rest of the day packing the pretty boxes into brown shipping boxes and trucking them to the post office. I was living on fistfuls of almonds and one burrito each evening, which I couldn’t always manage to get down while walking home to get into bed and prepare to do it all again the next day. I was in knots. I had signed on to be supreme commander of that sinking ship of a shop, and I was absolutely determined to make a change. I went home to Texas for Christmas, and came back to Boston with a plan.

The plan was to buy a condo, move out of my toxic roommate situation, and find a replacement manager for the chocolate shop by Easter. But, as my mother will remind me, “when you make a plan, God laughs.” And so it was, having met with a refreshingly honest mortgage broker, I found myself looking not for a condo, but simply a new apartment. One day, five viewings, check written, I was packing by the end of the second week in January, turned 30 in the last week of February, moved on March 1, and was satisfactorily replaced at the shop by mid-March just in time to dive into a busy tour season.

My move to Cambridge was made with the greatest of hope and faith that I was ready and able to twist my life into a little sharper focus. That I was worth my setting up some new boundaries to make room for more of what I really wanted. I wanted to be in a more central spot, closer to the T, making leaving home a less daunting prospect, so hopefully I would do it more. I wanted my own space in a more easily accessible place, so I could feel more free to invite guests into my own home. And I wanted the solitude and extra brain space to focus, not on the daily challenges of living and keeping the peace with two strangers, but on reading, and writing, and puzzling, and building in more of the memorable moments instead of continuing to lose the days as they all ran together. I had spent four and a half years building a solid foundation here in my adopted home, it was time to stop being so afraid, trust it, and start building upward again.

I can’t say I wasn’t just a little bit terrified or that the first two months of the year weren’t brutally exhausting. I can say that I never doubted I was making the right move, and that the effort has paid off in all the ways I wanted and more. I made enough space in 2017 to:

-read 36 books: 12,804 pgs, 21 Fiction, 15 Non-Fiction

-catch up on 5 excellent tv shows that made me think a whole lot about relationships and ambition

-go to 1 baseball game at Fenway

-See 3 musicals, 1 play, 1 burlesque, and 2 other concerts  

-Go to Symphony Hall 4 times

-Attend 4 author readings at the Harvard Bookstore

-View the Tall Ships in Boston Harbor from the deck of a pirate ship

-Go to the zoo

-Go Apple picking (and bake and eat two apple pies)

-Carve Pumpkins

-Select and decorate a full-sized Christmas Tree

-See “It’s A Wonderful Life” on the big screen

-Ride on the Polar Express!

-Take 8 trips: 9 flights, 2 rides on Amtrak, and 3 road trips

-Play 7 escape rooms

-I finally worked up the courage to leave a job that was no longer serving me, and found a new one I really enjoy.

-I gave 236 tours.

My sweet Grannie passed away in July, and in the process of cleaning out her house, I had the opportunity to reconnect with some of my family. I spent a lot more time with good friends, and embarked upon what has thus far been a most amazing new relationship.

Through it all, I learned a lot about Winston Churchill and WWII, found a real stride as a tour guide, and came to truly appreciate (for what feels like the first time) the deep, necessary, and tangible benefits of surrounding oneself with really good people. Combing through it all, I think that has to be the overarching theme of 2017. Good people.

I am indebted to the dear friends with different skills than mine who swept in and calmly kept that shop clean and running in the mania of Christmas and Valentine’s Day. To another dear friend who made moving day so much more manageable just by showing up and sticking around so I wouldn’t be alone. To my lunch and nails buddy who has not only helped me kick the nail-biting habit by ensuring I get regular manicures, but who, through those outings, has reminded me time and again the importance of pausing to relax and to share, because life just makes more sense when there’s someone around with whom to talk it through. To my mom also for always lending a supportive ear, and for continuing to be a fantastic travel buddy. And to my amazing boyfriend who has truly lightened up my life with his patience, thoughtfulness, presence, humor, creativity, and enduring sense of adventure.

That same dear man has gotten me back into game playing, a pastime I adored as a child, but have fallen away from over the years due to the insidious ‘busyness,’ and also a lack of good playmates. Being a naturally introverted, conflict averse sort of person, I got turned off to playing games with people who were simply too competitive. It was no fun to win, no fun to lose, no fun to play, period. But, over the course of last year, especially in the waning months when I suddenly had more time to learn and be taught new games, and to revisit old ones with new people, I have been able to find a new joy, and a whole bunch of insight in playing.

Perhaps my first inkling of this was through escape rooms. We played my first one on our third date, and I am now an unapologetic addict (and am pleased to say I have passed the plague onto at least one other of my friends!). When I first heard about them, I was completely averse to the idea of getting locked in a room and having to rely on other people to help get me back out again. But, y’all, the puzzles! And also the immersive experience thing (probably the same reason I got hooked on Disney and Universal Studios when I rediscovered those places as an adult a few years ago.) And the more we play, the more my boyfriend reminds me, and the more it sinks in, that in order to get out of one of those rooms within an hour, you really need a team.

For some reason, those puzzle rooms are what it took for me to finally crack the “I must do everything myself and perfectly” mindset I’ve been carrying around for all these years. My brain works in a particular way, and the real fun of it is, other people’s brains work differently than mine! And oh! how very refreshing it is, to have someone else look at the same thing you are looking at and see it differently, because then you both get a bigger picture. I survived managing the shop last winter because I had a good team, each of whom liked doing different things, and so all of us together contributed what we did best, and the whole thing kept running. And we escape the escape rooms because different brains see different things and crack different puzzles. The trick, I suppose, is to find those brains that compliment your own. And the trick to that is to know your own. Which starts with getting curious about it.

And so, in a nutshell, that is what has gotten me to this point at the beginning of a new year. Good people. My boyfriend and I began 2018 learning and playing the Winston Churchill board game he got me for Christmas. No kidding it took us 6 hours to figure it out, but by the end of January 1st, we had successfully defeated the Axis and won the war! And I guess Winston is a good way to bring it all full circle.

As Anthony McCarten says in his book Darkest Hour (yes, same title and author as the film-go see it too!), “Winston had no aptitude for peace. His was a gift for crisis and its expression, for courage and its evocation, often for risk and its underestimation.” Winston was in the right place at the right time when his own particular talents were most needed. But he still had the great presence of mind to surround himself with others of different mindsets, with different skills. He listened to them and allowed his mind to be changed when necessary. And thus he succeeded where the dictators who insisted on ruling by right and might ultimately failed. Even the great solitary figures of history, if you look closely, were not so solitary in the end.

So 2017 now firmly in the past, here I am, relishing my January lull, spending good time with my new (and delightful!) roommate, and putting my grandmother’s coffee table back to the use it enjoyed in my childhood- crafting. Having learned and played quite a few games together, my boyfriend and I are now designing and building our own, and I am having such a great time with the markers and stickers and construction paper. And more than that with the great exercise in collaboration. Cooperation is really so much more fun than competition when it comes right down to it.

So here’s to 2018, whatever it brings, may we learn great things from it, and most of all, may it be an adventure!

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The 2017 Read List