I often think about being a little numb to life; how a monumental tantrum or some unexpected mini-disaster takes over my life for an evening / a day / a week and then it’s gone and I move on very quickly, returning to my morning walk, my customer meetings, my school pickup and I have no time to mull it over, to obsess over it, to think of better way to handle certain things. I am still not sure this is what people talk about when they advice against rumination. To me, it seems like I also lost the mental space to consider and digest, not just ruminate. A friend asked me, to my delight, if I was going to write another yearly reflection and I have been writing in my head in little spurts ever since, hoping I’d be able to fit in at least another blog post before then, and yet here I am. I am still grateful for this quiet, rainy day when I can sit by myself and think about a year it has been.
It’s a year when the world felt broken again, with the continuing war in Ukraine and many civilian victims in Israel and Gaza. Interest rates are going up and everything is getting more expensive. The tech world was obsessed with AI and Chat GPT. In an attempt to control what I can I started going to the gym and managed to finish a strength training program I heard a lot about but had never done before. Then I started another one. At times going to the gym felt amazing, and sometimes it was just a pain, another thing that I had to do. I had some business travel this year and the girls were sick during winter a lot so my workout routine was interrupted quite a few times – yet I got back into it and even when it wasn’t perfect it was much, much better than not doing it at all. I probably won’t go back to the body I had pre-kids but I am determined to have strong muscles even when I am in my 60s and 70s.
Work was challenging this year, with a hard economic climate and constant changes and me finding my stride in a deeply technical field. I’ve worked, laughed and ranted with some fantastic people (some of them became good friends) and I have learned so much. And at the end of the year I am finally taking substantial time off – my parents are coming tomorrow!
Around my birthday this year I had arguably the biggest freakout about my age I’ve ever had. A friend casually dropped a comment about the importance and my lack of social life when we were catching up and it clearly resonated and awoke something dark in me as I cried on a morning walk thinking how I don’t have any friends anymore. Thankfully, another friend talked me off the ledge (in hindsight, it is a little strange to complain about lack of friends to an actual friend).
Ivy and Willow turned 3 and their personalities continue to be very different. Riley and Ivy are now in a semi-constant state of bickering mixed with sisterly love. They are now playing together more – but also fight much more. Willow mostly prefers her own path, either quietly chilling, angrily demanding something or giggling her head off. All three like playing “The floor is lava”. I remember Riley’s early years so vividly and it seemed like they lasted for so long – yet the twin’s first 3 years feel much more like a blur. I also remember Riley getting progressively easier each year – yet it sometimes seems to be the opposite with the twins. I have now braved the playground by myself with all three and everyone survived even if it wasn’t an easy (or particularly enjoyable) experience for me.
After a conversation with Riley’s teacher I started obsessing over helping her with writing and, to a lesser degree, maths. The education system is quite different in Australia to the one I went through and both have their strength and shortcomings. I am now reading books about better spelling / math instruction – or rather those books look at me forlornly from the overflowing bookshelves as I stare at my phone, overwhelmed. I did manage to help Riley improve her handwriting and some of her general writing skills but not nearly enough (she asked me how to spell “if” yesterday…). She also seems to be enjoying reading much more. Last year she attempted to sign cards to everyone in her class – but ran out of steam pretty quickly. This year she completed all of them and another one for her teacher, she’s done it in batches and 99% by herself – all I did after buying the cards was making her a list in the middle of the process so she could see who she’s done the cards for already.
It feels like I’ve done at least 300 loads of laundry this year (I am tempted to start counting and put it in a dashboard somewhere). I caught thousands of Pokemon on my phone (I installed the game to play with Riley but instead it made me go for walks more often – I walk more than 50 km each week including a 2 hour walk on most Saturdays). I changed loads of nappies (then the twins seemingly toilet trained themselves… at least partially). I’ve been thrown up on more times than I care for to remember. I managed to read some books. I felt awe while looking at a sleeping child almost every night (some nights I was way too exhausted). I went to Las Vegas and Auckland for the first time in my life. James and I went to a wedding in New Zealand by ourselves. I finally bought myself a piano and played the entirety of “Fur Elise” and not just the easy part. I feel like I worked hard all year in all areas of my life and I felt like little changes overtime added up to something significant if modest, even when it’s not all that noticeable from the outside.
My wish for next year is for more peace, more creativity, less sickness for the entire family (and more fishing for James). And if you got to this paragraph, I hope you have a wonderful holiday break and a great year ahead.