A Slow Start

I have been slowly transitioning into 2008. It feels like I still had some 2007 stuff to wrap up. I nearly forget to uphold the tradition of the Sharp family (at least tradition for the last 4 years or so) to come up with 3 words to describe 2007 and 3 words I would hope to describe 2008. It's something we normally do on New Year's Eve. Bacchus kept my mind in jail. No big, I'll just do it now as it's always been something that's always been helpful on the journey. Kind of a way to check in with myself.

This morning, Jenn reminded me to do this.

So, as a reflection first...

The worlds I wrote a year ago, hoping to define 2007:
HUMILITY (without hostility)
CLARITY (without certainty)
STABILITY (without security)

I think that I lived into each of these...and they lived into me...at least on some level.

My words in retrospect to define 2007:
Experimental
Disappointment
Hard-Working

I don't want to spend too much time unpacking those words, so I'll just say a little about each.

We moved to SF as an experiment. We really invested into our art (music and painting) as an experiment. We opened ourselves up to a communal voice as an experiment. We traveled as an experiment. We tried new diets/foods/worldviews as an experiment. We moved in with another family as an experiment. We continue to push ourselves into new places with new hypotheses about how the world could work.

It was also a year of disappointment...coming up against limitations. It was a year of realizing that idealistic dreams are seldom sustainable in the real world as they are in my head. And that's okay...it doesn't mean we shouldn't dream or try to live into God's Future. It simply means that everything costs something. I was also disappointed in people, myself, God (again), the government, the weather, Paxton, Holly, myself, myself, myself. Disappointment can reveal unfair expectations, judgment, and other such things. It can also help make the future more sustainable. Limitations can be so freeing.

I am a hard-worker about some things. I am a lazy fool about others. This year I tried really hard to be just former...a hard-worker. We checked into counseling to work on our marriage. I wanted to be a present father, so we worked half days. I incorporated our business. I made several batches of beer and other libations to share with friends and strangers. We hosted people we did not know. We tried to shape the community as we were being shaped by it. We hired freelancers. I produced an amazing record and Holly an amazing art series. We did a 12k mile tour with a 1-year-old. We worked hard. And there were many fruits from our labor.

Okay, that was hardly "a couple words", but there it is.

And (dun, dun, dun, dah!) my words for 2008:
Breath - I want to learn to be in the now
Health - I want to be healed mentally, physically, socially and spiritually
New Chapter - This year I enter my 30s (not really...as I turn 31 in Feb) and I want my 30s to be a decade free of debt (hoping to squelch the rest of college debt this year) and full of solidification in my life-direction.

Now into 2008 we go...