I don’t get into car accidents with moving vehicles. I hit stationary objects. The worst offender is the cement pillons in parking garages. I quivered in fear when I moved into my condo this year and saw I would be pulling in and pulling out multiple times a day amid threatening cement pillons that could be side swiped or backed into. So far, since February I have only smashed into one (and only moderately cracked the back bumper which was easy to ignore) so those are better odds than in the past.
But just yesterday, I pulled my car out of the acupuncture parking lot at 9 PM and didn’t register the crunching noise until I saw my left rear view mirror dangling like a mangled robot from a Terminator movie. As I pulled the car forward, hearing the scrape of paint coming off the metal of my car and the shattering of the mirror onto the ground, it dawned on me what I had done. My mind had gone completely elsewhere, to another dimension, in that moment I was pulling out and I was also very tired from being up at 5 AM to torture myself in hot yoga. Add to it the end of the year makes me dreamy and I let down my guard. Like my mind and body know how much I put into the year to make it a success and now it’s like the subscription for sanity ran out.
So I hit poles and have no clue how it happened.
I end the year notoriously in a daze.
It starts around Christmas where I get into this kind of floaty lackadaisical state. Like I was so on top of everything, accomplished so much all year, was present for all the turns and twists of my evolving life, I just ran out of gas in the tank. Or awareness of pillons as it seems. I tend to fall into this place where I burn coffee on the stove again (after getting an Ember from my boyfriend to prevent this for at least a month), forget what I am doing when I am in a room, wear the same black hoodie for too many days, cry substantially and randomly and call my therapist who I left mid year because everything was perfect to now try and understand why I am like a shapeless goo.
While the end of other years, I may have beat myself up or judged my state of haphazard being, now I am kind of bemused with myself. I just shake my head and shrug like “What are you going to do?” and fight the desire to judge what may also be an onset of menopausal brain fog. Sure, the rear mirror will cost me some dough to fix, and put a little wrinkle in the days plans, but I also don’t really care. It’s just a car, and it’s just money, and if I am still happy that is more important. I am not a lunatic running around screaming about how I should be more responsible and now I have financially fucked myself, and I can’t go do all those important things I was going to do in a car. I can’t believe how many years I may have behaved like that but I have no desire to treat myself that way anymore. In fact, I got to call my boyfriend and we had a good laugh about my car debacle. “I once backed my car right into my neighbor’s car one morning and almost totaled it,” he said. I roared with laughter. God it felt good to be one with humanity and not ending the year having to be like awarded the best person of the year award.
I am more interested in how much permission I give myself to round out a fantastic year of so much joy, advancement, discovery and fun with being a complete space case and showing up for the bare minimum requirements of me, and the rest of the time watching The Crown Season Six and eating the last remnants of the Halloween candy (which is a half eaten stale Butterfinger and some weird Harry Potter Hershey’s bar). I went and got a chemical peel on my face so I have been bemused watching old skin come off my face like I am some reptile (although not enough skin for the cost in my opinion), and I spent a lot of time on my computer having this thought or that about the year past and then forgetting completely what I was thinking about.
I absolutely love when I discover I have been sitting for over five minutes in a daze. I am letting go of 2023, and rebooting for the next year. If you have been happy and productive and created a great life for yourself in 2023, baking the perfect holiday cookies or skiing the best slope is not necessarily the way to put a punctuation on the end. I tend to haphazardly meander my way through the last seven days of the year like someone who was given a Costco card for the first time. Slightly confused, overwhelmed, financially unsure but convinced they need a indoor firepit with book holders.
In 2023, I didn't de-lint that sweater I love but still can’t wear because the pills are too invasive, but I did put into a motion a project to shelve out the girls’ closet which was a cornucopia of dust balls, lost socks, half crocheted projects and a hanging bar that looked like with the slightest Santa Ana wind would snap in half. The custom-made closet is apparently designed and shipped from Minnesota and not ready for 8 weeks so I am glad I got a jump on that project. I am expecting it to sing me a lullabye for that time table. I also did what I said I wouldn’t which was work in my bedroom this year, so I am going to get going on a nice office space for 2024 (which I can’t look for without a left rear view mirror so project for first week of January.)Working out of the bedroom lent tweezing my eyebrows between coaching calls in the mirror just feet away and occasionally shouting at the cat like an old drunk for meowing. My dream for 2024 is an office with four walls, and a nice little view, and very very quiet neighbors (who don’t meow.)
What I am trying to say is don’t let how you are at the end of the year be any kind of gage of what you were in 2023 or will be in 2024. The last few days of any year are time to be mush. Don’t make judgement calls or big decisions (except writing a book and hiring me as your coach and editor which is a very very good impulsive decision to make ASAP). Like just flow, and sleep, and veg and trust if you look back at all you did in 2023, if you give yourself permission to be happy, you will have tenfold in 2024.
Happy New Year!
Love this Kim! Can relate to SO much of it 🤪😂 Here’s to wandering aimlessly into the new year 🎉💛 With love xxx ♥️