Get the smelling salts – this here is an actual new post. I know! It’s crazy but it just might work.
In the past few years, I have established some traditional new years activities.
- New Years Eve – Hop on a ferry and time it such that you’re on the ferry when midnight hits and you should be able to see the fireworks at the Space Needle. Since I was living in West Seattle, I’d take the ferry to Southworth from Fauntleroy and then drive up to Bremerton and take that back to Seattle. Would sometimes miss the first bit of the fireworks show but still an awesome thing.
- New Years Day – Go to Deception Pass State Park and wander around. Twice I also picked up my new Washington State Park calendar at the entrance but last year they were closed so I had to buy it online.
When I need to find my equilibrium or unload mountains of stress you will find me at a beach, on a ferry, in the mountains, or one of our groovy state parks. I start my year feeling peaceful and relaxed. The extended time alone with my brain (eek!) without all the distractions of life can lead to life epiphanies, personal growth, or just interesting, creative thoughts. I like starting my year this way.
Now, as some of you know, though a Seattlite I am, I have been living in Ellensburg recently. (Some good friends are kindly letting me stay with them until I kick this unemployment problem.) It’s been a lot of fun exploring the middle part of the state a discovering new cool places. As the end of 2008 drew near, however, I really felt that I needed to go to Deception Pass State Park on the 1st. Thinking that I’d drive there on the morning of the 1st and crash at a friend’s house in the Seattle area. Then the snow that wouldn’t stop hit the area. Conditions were looking uncertain. On the 31st I was thinking I probably wouldn’t go since it sounded like driving conditions would be sucky and stressful. At the same time I was mentally beating myself up for being such a wuss. (An intrepid explorer (it’s true, my car is a Dodge Intrepid) I have been known to be stubborn to the point of stupidity.) I felt like my year would be off kilter if I couldn’t get to Deception Pass. Woke up on the 1st to discover the pass had been closed due to poor conditions! Instantly I was absolved of wussiness since it was the pass closure stopping me from getting there and not myself.
Funny thing, despite being 180 miles from Deception Pass, I started off the new year with a sense of peacefulness. Most of the day I spent upstairs in my room – playing computer games, organizing job search stuff, cuddling with my puppy, and gazing out my window at the snowy covered fields and hills that surround us. New Years Day perspective had shifted from looking out towards the Strait of Juan de Fuca to gazing at the foothills that surround the Kittitas Valley and yet was the same.
I have greater ability to create an environment needed to let go of life’s distractions than I had believed. An epiphany about myself that I welcome!
(all that being said, I will be going to Deception Pass sometime this month just to quell this nagging sense of incompleteness.)
subscribe
