by Hope
How will you finish out the year? Will you spend it celebrating all the wins of the year? Wallowing in the loss? Or are you already forward facing? Ready to leave 2024 in the past and step into what is to come?
For me, I am slowing down this year. Being very intentional about where I allow my mind to linger.
While I may never be able to stop my mind from racing, from making lists, from looking far into the future and attempting to make plans. I can choose different. And this year, I am choosing to slow down this month.
Christmas is different this year. I’ve made no plans, set no expectations, and plan to take the day as it comes.
Since I’ve returned from Texas, I am taking each day as it comes. Trying to sit on decisions and evaluating all options. Not rushing or being ruled by emotions. Nor fear.
The Last Few Years were…
2023 was spent wading through grief and loss. It felt like I was tossed from crisis to loss and then back again, over and over again.
2024 has been spent making strides to regain my equilibrium and rolling around ideas for my future. And the transition to empty nester was complete.
2025 is going to be the year that I make decisions about what this next phase of life will be. I must be wise. And I must not rush.
And that is my focus for this last month of the year. I am going to be still. Be quiet. Be alone. And spend time seeking God’s will, determining what is best and healthiest for me, and perhaps, finding a purpose that I can turn my eye too. I truly do need something outside of my own head to focus on. But I have absolutely no idea what that is to be.
My wish for you these last two weeks – peace, joy, and a gentle ending to the year.
Hope is a creative, solutions-focused business manager helping clients grow their business and work more efficiently by leveraging expertise in project management, digital marketing, & tech solutions. She’s recently become an empty nester as her 5 foster/adoptive kids have spread their wings. She lives with her 3 dogs in a small town in NE Georgia and prefers the mountains to the beaches any day. She struggles with the travel bug and is doing her best to help each of her kids as their finish schooling and become independent (but it’s hard!) She has run her own consulting company for almost twenty years! Hope began sharing her journey with the BAD community in the Spring of 2015 and feels like she has finally in a place to really focus on making wise financial decisions.