Hello, 2017!

Currently watching Anne of Green Gables and she has reminded me that “tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it… yet.” This is sort of how I feel about 2017, a fresh new year without any mistakes in it… yet. 2016 was definitely a jam-packed year, filled with many firsts and many ups and downs. I guess I can say that about most years – the ups and the downs – but I feel like 2016 tossed my emotions into a washing machine and set it to the highest speed spin cycle.

Some highlights of 2016 included: Visiting Taiwan and Japan, David and Rachel’s wedding, moving into my own house (!!!!), going to my first music festival at Outside Lands (and then the Chance concert a few months later!), our girls trip to San Diego, running a half marathon with my friends, performing in my home studio’s Nutcracker, and finally, traveling to Korea. A lot of traveling and new experiences, and I’m glad that I got the opportunity to share a lot of these experiences surrounded by good people.

Listing out all those highlights… reminds me that it’s more important to remember the good than the bad. The week before I left for Korea was a very long and hard week. It seemed like just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, they did. But now that I’m on the other side, it just seems funny that so many unfortunate things could happen in the same week – and it really wasn’t that bad, and I survived!

I definitely found myself in a slump near the end of the year – I started to worry a lot about my future and that worry turned into stress and that stress turned into a lot of unhappiness. It feels a lot like my dreams have died but as many people have reminded me, just because some dreams die doesn’t mean that you can’t continue to dream. But I still don’t want to. I feel like I’m reluctant to be vulnerable enough to dream again – I guess that can be a goal for 2017.

Anyways, I’m glad 2016 is over and I’m glad that there’s a new year ahead of me. So far, so good.