I realize it will probably be January 3rd by the time I post this blog about the end of 2014. I wanted to be safely sure it was over before I gave thanks for the end of that year. I think we're good now, and I can flirt with the new romance that is 2015, my invisible inevitable path forward without 2014 sneaking up behind me and laying another blow.
In retrospect, 2014 was pretty interesting. There was a lot of change, and still a lot of good stuff. I saw a lot of beauty, and as if to remind me of this, the sun lit of the sky for one last glorious sunset December 31, 2014. It seemed to me it was trying to hang on a little longer, a little brighter than it had in days past. Nature provided me the ceremonious closure I was hoping for as I await my new start, and I watched the sun set on 2014 with a smile on my face...not a smug one, but an appreciative one for the good experienced and the bad survived.
As I settled in with my sunsetty westward thoughts, I did glance behind, to the east and to the coming night of the New Year. The story would have been better if I had been facing the New Year forward instead of behind, but that would be a lie, so will stick to the original. The future, misguidedly behind me for just a few more minutes, was almost a literal blank canvas. The fortune teller inside me wants to say that this means 2015 will be the product of my efforts and imagination...it can be whatever I make it to be, no obstacles, no surprises.
I tried to take a couple of photos on a couple of different settings on my camera, and got two very different impressions of the same scene, seconds apart. It reminded me on a lecture several years ago sponsored by the ever awesome Alberta Sports Park Reaction & Wildlife. That lecture was on perspective. In it the analogy they used was that of a window, and the difference between photos taken from several different windows in a home to a gorgeous panoramic scene out front of that home. All of the photos were beautiful, but the bigger panoramic was the obvious masterpiece. The point is that we all have our windows...the things that form our views, and make our view different from someone standing in a similar but slightly different place. Our windows show us great things, but have blind spots, limitations, and boundaries. This isn't bad, the different views are just as true as our own in many cases, but it is important to open your windows, shift your windows, and try to see all that you can see. In a nutshell, it's about perspective. We so often talk about perspective with regards to being positive or negative in attitude, but perspective is so much more. Broadening and changing perspectives allows you to identify new opportunities and get a better outlook on challenges. It offers new ways to look at solving problems, and helps you see the bigger end goal. Perspective is what I think of when I look at these 2 photos at the end of my 2014.
The first is blue. There was a lot of blue in my 2014. My grandma died in January. An aunt, an uncle, a neighbour, my favorite boat captain, an animal activist icon in Bermuda, and my bestest buddy the Lexi cat all died in 2014 as well. I had to have surgery. I had a bike accident and might just need another surgery. This means there was a lot less jogging and some weight gain that I am fervently trying to reverse. I made some tough decisions. I left Bermuda. I didn't return to Edmonton. I ended up in Saskatchewan much longer than expected. My carefully laid plans for 2014 had delay after delay after delay. It gave me more tough decisions.
The flip side is this second picture, which is simply aglow and fiery. 2014 also provided many things I have needed for a long time. Rest. Time. I spent 7 months saying goodbye to beautiful Bermuda and irreplaceable friends, and then 5 months rediscovering Saskatchewan, family, and old irreplaceable friends. I learned to drive a combine for one thing, and have spent more time in Regina, Saskatoon, and Medicine Hat than I had in all the years I lived close to them. I got a few girls weekends in, made it to Boston (3 times), Las Vegas, Calgary, Whitefish, and even spent 10 whole days in Edmonton, 4 or 5 of those blissfully watching parachutes come out of the sky at Eden North. It was my first Christmas home in 6 years.
Blue or ablaze, it was all part of my life this past year. Good or bad it is all part of the past. It has slipped beneath the horizon of time just as 2014 faded out over the farm in this last picture.
I spent January 1st with no resolutions, no vigor for attacking the new year. It was a day of rest, a quasi silent reverie for two thousand fourteen, all it gave, all it claimed.
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