Looking backwards has always been standard procedure for me.

Journaling.  Reflecting.  Keeping records and creating scrapbooks in their glory days.  (And Chatbooks now.)

Nature Notes that tell us what bird we saw on this day last year or six years ago and a daily family journal that reminds us that yes, we have completed a puzzle every December 26 for a decade.

Looking back.  It’s part of my DNA.

So is looking forward I guess.

I like “planning” the future too.  I look ahead every Sunday and plot the week’s course.  The kids and I call it our Sunday Meeting because they like to gauge their expectations for how often we have to leave the house and I like to prep them if I expect them to wear a shirt with buttons or something crazy like that.

I always maintain a paper calendar and there are already dates penciled in for May and July.  It’s what I do.

But I also want to be aware of Now.  

Admittedly, it’s the hardest one for me.

But I’m always on a mission to improve my Now focus.  (Right Now & Forever.)

I’m not choosing a word for this year and I don’t even know if I am going to make my big old annual list of Tasks to Complete and Places to Go and Things to Accomplish.

I think this year I am just going to live.  To be alive in the world that I’m in.

Sure, I hope that 2018 is the year that I buy my own home.  I hope to take plenty of hikes and I’d like to stand on top of Pike’s Peak in Colorado.  I hope my car keeps running and I have a handful of business and writing goals.

But mostly, I just plan to be alive and aware of the life that I have directly in front of me.

For years, I’ve worried about stuff that might happen and I’ve worried about stuff that already happened and the worry didn’t really accomplish anything good or lovely or true.  Some of the bad stuff that I worried about never actually happened.  And I’m alright.  And some of the bad stuff I worried about actually did, in fact, happen.  And I’m still alright.

Right Now.  That’s where you’ll find me.

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