Traverse City Record-Eagle

Kathy Gibbons: Northern Living

Related Photos

January 2, 2010

Kathy Gibbons: New year reflections

By KATHY GIBBONS

There is a clean slate type of thing that happens with a new year. We may make resolutions, reaffirm goals or simply stop and reflect, kind of a spring cleaning for the brain -- or maybe, the soul.

For me, it's also an opportunity to focus on what I have, not on what I don't. To think about the people who have been and are in my life.

Writing this in my home, looking out at snow framed by a sky streaked with morning orange, I think yet again how lucky we are to live in a place like this. Working downstate now, while coming back most weekends, I reaffirm my goal to maintain a house here even if career keeps me there.

My son and his new wife are home at the holidays. Talking about graduate school internships and the eventual job search, we discuss the pros and cons of one city, then another.

"But none of them is Traverse City," says my daughter-in-law. She is not from here, but gets it.

As for people, I've just opened a batch of holiday cards that came right before Christmas. One is from a former coworker and good friend; another is from the couple who stood up in my parents' wedding 50-plus years ago.

Between the going back and forth and everything else, I ran out of time and didn't get cards out to them. I resolve to send them notes now that things are settling down.

Meanwhile, in my new job, I've been getting to know some nice people and their stories. One had surgery last week and I went to her house for the first time, to take food over. My new boss is the kind of person who looks out for her staff. She spent hours scouting apartments for me, even though it was the last thing she had time for or needed to do. She is not unlike my old boss, who also looks out for his employees and cares on a basic, human level. Even when things that happened might be out of his control, you knew he was in your corner.

Beyond that, I review my goals. And affirm yet again that the only one who can make any of them happen is me.

That's probably the most important part of any new year's introspection. Other people -- and a little luck -- may help us get to where we want to be, but we've got to take our own lead.

I was telling someone that I've come to visualize life as not being unlike the ants you watch building an anthill, diligently going back and forth, one grain of sand at a time, never giving up no matter what. I visualize the day when my own anthill is finished.

Unless some rotten kid comes along and kicks it all in just before it's done.

Kathy Gibbons can be reached at gibbonskath@yahoo.com. For more of Kathy's columns, log on to record-eagle.com/kathygibbons.

Text Only