2018: It didn’t suck for me

I know that 2018 was a really shitty year for so many people. It was a year that threw misery and grief at people with utter abandon, leaving them too exhausted to do little more than just raise a middle finger to this departing year.

I felt that way about 2017. That was a rotten year for me and maybe that’s why 2018 didn’t seem so bad. For much of this year, I was just keeping my head down and trudging forward and that was enough. Somewhere along the way, the phrase “Dare to be seen.” started glowing like a giant neon sign for me and I tried to follow it. Because of that, I had some really good moments throughout 2018:

• I gave myself the challenge to create a burlesque act and submit it to my favorite show. The whole goal was to have the focus to take an idea and make enough out of it for the submission video and application. I did that. To my utter shock, delight, and terror, it was accepted.
• I refined the act and the costuming, including dragging my sewing machine out of the attic and rediscovering my seamstress skills as I made several pieces from scratch. I performed this act in front of a sold out crowd and it was my best performance yet.

• I’ve been invited to perform the act again in 2019 at another fantastic show.
• I finished painting the interior of my house. It took me more than two years to finish covering the unfortunate choices the previous owners left behind, but every wall is now freshly painted.
• I took myself on a road trip to New England. I drove from Nashville to Vermont to Maine to Massachusetts to Rhode Island to Connecticut. I went whale watching, ate a lot of lobster, walked a witch trial tour, and visited a whole bunch of lighthouses. I also detoured slightly to drive home through Delaware so that I could say at 47 years old, I’d been to 47 states.

• I watched my son graduate magna cum laude from the University of Alabama.
• He later came to live with me for two months at the end of this year. He’d finalized his contract to join the Army and had some time to wait before heading to Basic Training and Officer Candidate School. My daughter came home from her junior year at University of Oregon for three weeks in December. I had both my kids living with me for the first time in five years and it was noisy, messy, and completely marvelous.
• I dated less in 2018 than I have in any of the 4 years that I’ve been single. I chose not to go back to any old mistakes, I chose to listen to my instincts when someone wasn’t right for me, and twice I chose to put cash on the table, get up, and walk out of a terrible date. I embraced my independence and self worth more in 2018.
• I went to therapy to address a long ago assault and ended up with a diagnosis of PTSD due to MST (Military Sexual Trauma). It took me 27 years to find the courage to honestly talk about what happened to me. With no attachment to the outcome, I filed a claim with the VA to report the assault. My motivation was to ensure that what happened to me was finally heard by the military.
• I kicked aside all my excuses and self doubt and I enrolled in life coach training. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for myself for a while now. I’m not sure what my end goal is and that’s a little scary, but I’m doing it anyway.

I’ve got some new goals ahead for 2019 and I’m going to continue daring myself to be seen. I’m proud of myself for making it through 2018.