Metamorphosis

Today is my first day of vacation.  I was actually kind of bummed yesterday because I looked at how much vacation time I already have accrued after taking three weeks off in October, and I do have enough to have taken all of this week off too.  Not totally sure I could have gotten away with it though, but it was a nice thought.  Something though about knowing I would have this long time off and not being back at work for a week and a half made the last week or two go by quickly and made it not be so bad.  I feel like this year has pushed and pulled me in a few different directions, and I have been working on a lot of things under the surface, and not really noticing how far I have come.

A year ago, I remember sort of dreading the holidays, especially New Year's Eve, because I didn't have a boyfriend.  And thinking that I'd work on that, try to meet someone, just when I was done studying Italian, and then just when I was back from my trip from Italy, and now it's the end of the year and I haven't put any effort into meeting any potential suitors.  But I haven't felt like it was the right time either, because I have been working on so many other things, working on myself.  And I start to feel this change within myself, my mind, in dealing with problems that have always been there in the back of my head.  I think when you are in the middle of problems, it's always easy to say how screwy things are, and how everything is messed up, and you'll never get anywhere.  But at this point, I realize that I have come a long way in the last year with righting my self-image.  I also think about how often I have felt in my life that I "needed" a man to do things for me, and time and time again, I have seen how capable I am of doing things by myself, on my own.  It's funny, when you stop expecting yourself to be perfect and always do everything in the right way, you can recognize more how often what you are doing is actually working just fine.

I do feel like turning the page on the calendar is both symbolic and also that change is actually afoot in my life.  And I am welcoming it.