I'm so tired. I am tired of scary health issues, injuries, sadness, bad luck. I am tired of treading water over and over every day, fighting to keep my head above that water. The water never stops pouring in.

And yeah, this sounds overdramatic and tragic. But I have to tell you, it's all I can feel. The years in this decade have just piled on more, and more crap. This last year wasn't much better than the one before, or the one before that. It never ends.

I used to be a hopeful, and optimistic person. I had this naive hopeful outlook for the future. Bad things happen, but the skies would be blue soon enough. Only the past few years have beaten that out of me. All I see is grey clouds, and gloomy skies. There's rarely a break in-between the gloom and I am exhausted by the weight of the gloom.

This year was filled with more serious health scares, injuries (I somehow dislocated a rib in September, and right before Christmas I fell down my stairs and seem to have cracked my tailbone), job loss, job departures.

We decided to put the house up for sale at the end of summer. Our plan is to move from here to Ontario. I want to be out of this Province, and closer to my mother. The house hasn't sold yet, and I am panicking a little about that. We are both between jobs at the moment, and applications to jobs in the new town we're trying to move to are going out. But without selling the house here, we can't buy a house there. And as much as I know I should NOT take this personally, every time someone visits the house and doesn't like it, I feel horrible. Like our house is garbage and no one will buy it.

We bought it. It was a nice house. Someone will like it, I am sure. But right now I feel like this is just as hopeless as everything else. And I'm scared. And I am overwhelmed.

I left my job at McGill when my contract finished at the end of November. It wasn't an easy decision, but easier than when I decided to leave in 2016. I could not be downtown any more. With a bunch of scary health stuff that happened through the summer, it seemed like a good time to take that chance, and relocate ourselves somewhere else. Things lined up just right for this to be the perfect opportunity. I did love that new job, and I loved the new team I worked with. It just wasn't the right fit for me anymore. Location, mostly. Thanks, 2013. I had hoped to get more done in the house (packing, decluttering) during December, but injuries prevented that from happening. So it's still a slow roll.

BUT SOME GOOD THINGS DID HAPPEN!

And I have been trying to focus on that. It's difficult though.

So, good things:

I truly did love my new job. I loved being back with my Music family for the year and a half I was.

The health scare became slightly less scary, and though not cured, on the right path.

We put the house up for sale!

My in-laws are amazing, and I am so lucky to be part of that family.

My Mummy was able to come stay with us for Christmas week, and that made me the HAPPIEST. Even though I'd broken my bottom days before she arrived and I wasn't able to do much. We had a terrific Christmas dinner with my in-laws, and it made me feel so warm, and safe.

I painted a lot, and completed a second full year of bullet journalling. I have now finished four full notebooks over two years, and have started my fifth book to fill through 2020.

My animals are healthy, and happy.

I read 71 books this year.

I decided to thin out social media from my daily life because it's loud, and chaotic. So I won't be on FB as much, and will be removing a lot of stuff from my account there. I plan on focusing on blogging, and instagram. Starting January, the best way to follow me will be through IG, or this blog. You can even sign up for email notifications for when I post - top right corner!! I will work on revamping my website this year as well. I have had the same theme for decades. No joke.

---

I had hoped to start 2020 in a new home, and I am sad that I am still in the same place I have been for almost 13 years, but I know the reality is that it will happen, and it will happen when it's meant to happen. That doesn't quite erase how I feel though.

I did recently discover a short poem that connected with me on a deep level, and so I am going to try to keep this in mind as we begin a new calendar year (and decade):

A storm was coming
but that's not what she felt.
It was adventure on the wind
and it shivered down her spine.

Atticus

And so I delicately, and tentatively, hope for that adventure that's around the corner. And I hope that this hope isn't empty. Because I am tired of being tired, and disappointed. I want to have hope again, and not be so terrified of it.