Nuggets.
The last week of every December I try to take some time to remember what the hell happened that year.
The easiest way for me to reflect is to look through the hundreds of handwritten journal entries, digital notes, and parcel through loads of photos I end up deleting half of (I take 5 of the same exact photo and I need to quit it).
This year is no different. I’ve begun my back-track starting January 2022 and as I move through what I documented, I take snippets of what hits all over again; what I want to keep.
I like to take note of the moments when retrospect reveals how puzzle pieces were clicking into place internally, unbeknownst to me at the time. Whether it be a decision I was weighing or a realization that proved to be the breakthrough I needed to conclude my thoughts on something, I see the moving parts of my year etched on pages stained with coffee cup rings. I recognize places in my notebook I know a tear dropped and smudged drying ink. I see the typos in my digital notes and remember fighting with autocorrect and giving up.
These puzzle pieces represent the small bit-by-bits of life where I can mark the spot and know in real-time that I was in the process of becoming. Entry by entry, I was becoming the person I am today and will evolve to be as I put language to the internal shift happening within me at that point in time.
Growth on paper. Process documented. Life memorialized.
I especially love specific entries where I remember where I was when I wrote them. Curtis Park on a blanket, the sun in my eyes at the table in my backyard, in my blue folding chair on Schoolhouse Beach, sipping an americano at a coffee shop. I’m brought back to the physical surroundings and relive the sweet solitude, remembering the smell, heat, or chill of that memory’s environment.
It’s become a steady annual rhythm for me to not only read, listen, and look back on my year, but as I do, gather all the important snippets those 365 days gifted me. I record these in a list I typically entitle “nuggets.”
Some of 2022’s so far:
I won’t see the results of any action if I don’t give it the gift of consistency.
Let people validate your pain.
It’s risky, unbelievably risky, in the eyes of religion to believe God feels the same about me regardless of performance.
“Never allow anyone to be humiliated in your presence.” Ariel Burger
We’re all mosaic displays of the pieces we’ve picked up and vacant spaces of the things we’ve let go.
Maturity is appreciation and challenge simultaneously.
I’m learning how to interpret the world through this kaleidoscope of all the history I bring into today and all that’s left unanswered still.
I hope my 20s are a time spent building me and my 30s are a time spent building others; building something meaningful.
Only until I take stock of where and what a year has brought me do I feel like I’m actually making progress in life—however fast or slow.