Facing what's scary and owning it

I'm normally very sappy and sentimental when it comes to the New Year. There is something about an old year dying and new one giving birth that makes me almost wistful for what could have been - or maybe what SHOULD have been. Nitpicking on what what I should have accomplished does nothing, really, but serve to make me have regrets.

This year I have none.

I left a job that I held for close to four years and started a new, scary venture that had me sitting at my kitchen table crafting and creating posts and tidbits for clients. I love what I'm doing and the scariness has washed away along with the routine and normalcy. That's just it. We MUST put scary things on our agenda because if we don't, we stay the same forever and ever. My husband runs a successful paint/texture business and is living out his dream of making things new. I am safe in the stretch of his arms if I need him,  yet we have a system worked out that gives each of us responsibilities - not just one of us. I left the safe job to start the scary one knowing that I needed to make X amount of dollars to keep up my end of the bargain. Nothing drives you like knowing you are being depended upon to keep certain things functioning in the household. It's a good deal. 

I lost several things this year that I loved. My weekly column I wrote for a local newspaper was ditched suddenly and with no warning. It threw me, literally had me on the floor for a few days before I figured out that there is more waiting for me. That I need to pursue and find and track down the opportunities I'm meant to find. That I'm not meant to stay in the tiny box of comfort I had crafted for myself. The scariness was pursuing me and if I didn't get up off that floor and keep moving, I would be lost to it - destined to stay small. 

My highest goal, along with gathering enough clients to keep me growing (and them as well), is to put finger to keyboard and bang out the first words of that ever-growing novel inside my head. My husband's story taunts me with its list of lost years, packs of wild children, abuse and neglect, and wild rides underneath trains. I believe the haze of drugs and violence he experienced scare me and tell me I can't write the story. The prostitutes with their clacking heels and deep rivers in the dark of night make me feel as if the story cannot be told with any semblance of order - that I will fail.  It's time to face that little lost boy, crying on the street corner. That teen so street-wise and jumping into danger with shadowy figures. That man I met who turned into the love of my life. His story needs told and I'm the one to tell it.

Tonight we greet the New Year as she arrives with all her finery and glitter. I will meet her with a vengeance and a fierceness to never stop...to pursue...to redeem and meet what I know I am.