Every year, a week after Thanksgiving, we go up into the attic and retrieve boxes of Christmas ornaments, lights, cards, and wrapping paper. We pass the boxes down, one of us on the folding ladder, the other waiting below. We’ll have already purchased our tree from the folks selling them at the carwash across from the golf course, and set it up in a stand in the living room. Now it’s time to trim the tree.

Inside the box, in an annual ritual prompted by Jon, are letters we’ve each written the year before to our future selves, to be opened at this time. Our letters describe how the past year unfolded, and what we expect will happen in the coming year. They are sometimes unwittingly funny (“hope the kitchen reno went well and we didn’t have a big fight!”) and always moving, as they chronicle a journey together from our individual perspectives. The writing of them sets in motion intentions, and reading them is like opening up a gift of prophecy and answerability. What did we actually accomplish? What didn’t happen? How very much in love we still are.

On my own, with the usual cultural prompting as we close out the year, I’ve begun taking stock of my life. I do this year-round with my bullet journal, which has several levels of accountability: daily checklists, weekly schedules and journaling, monthly goals in the future log, and then the annual goal list and perpetual dreams list. December is the time for the big reckoning!

Flipping through my journal, I can see that I achieved a good number of my 2019 goals, while some, though not reached, are in process. What remains to be done will transfer to 2020 if I’m still passionate about it. I’ll read through the whole journal and do a series of checks and transfers. I notice, at a glance, an item I’m about to transfer for the third year. Procrastination or an unfortunate combination of circumstances? Maybe both, to be honest. Because it’s something I really can’t let go, it’s time to call in an accountability buddy to make it so in 2020.

Although some bullet journalists use separate journals for work, home, and creative projects, I use one journal for everything. This makes a year-end reckoning also a reconciliation of the various parts of my life. Are they in balance? Mostly, though there’ve been times when one area pushed into another, and I felt the edges brush up against my moods.

Will be setting down my goals for the first half of 2020

It’s amazing the difference a journal and pen makes in my life! With them, and the focus I bring, I have agency. I am Linda-Marie and the Purple Crayon, my duties and dreams flowing onto the page and out into the world. Like a character in a novel (and perhaps we all are, in a cosmic sense, characters in a shared story), I try as best I can to steer the direction of my life’s narrative, to be proactive rather than, as can easily happen, spending precious time and energy reacting, losing sight of what is important to me. I’m, by nature and nurture, prone to accommodate the needs of others above myself. But with a shrinking timeline and greater self-awareness, I’m less inclined to that default when a reasoned look at the situation proves such a move isn’t warranted.

And so my journal becomes both map and compass, helping me navigate the life I most want to create. You can forget or make less real the hopes you whisper to the trees or speak to the moon. The ones you share, in a moment of bravery, tongue loosened by a glass of wine, with your best friends; or to your lover, when they hold your hands in theirs, and ask you about your dreams. Write them down on the page and they’ll stare back at you as an invitation, a reminder, or even a rebuke, if you ignore them.

In the coming evenings, I’ll begin planning out 2020, sitting by the Christmas tree, a mug of tea on the coffee table, and holiday music in the background. I’ll bring out my bandolier of colored pencils and pens, collection of whimsical stamps and ink pad, stickers, and pretty papers to adorn the lists and stories that I will dream, and then draw in my journal. This is sacred time, and a gift to myself during a season when I most need it!

It’s almost Auld Lang Syne-time, when we are reminded that our journeys are not alone, and are best spent in good company, with beloveds. May 2020 be your best year yet, with so much love and joy.

And there’s a hand my trusty friend!

And give me a hand o’ thine!

And we’ll take a right good-will draught,

for auld lang syne.