It continues to amaze me how this year has flown by.  I always feel like the days go slow and the weeks go fast.  I’m not sure how that happens, but it has.  It’s been far too many months since I’ve been on here posting about my life and my year, but I want to end the year out strong.  So I’m back!

I’m officially at day 305 of my year.  I’ve got 10 months under my belt and 2 months to go.  And you want to know a secret?  I feel FANTASTIC.

I started out the year on a real mission to find myself.  To learn who I am and what I want out of life.  And still may not know what I want for my life, but I’ve made a very important first step– I’m learning where to look.

In January, I had just lost a guy that was really fantastic.  I had just cut my hair and given up Diet Coke.  I was desperately searching for a way to be happy being single and made up a list of things that I thought would get me there.

Ten months later and I’ve changed the list as a whole, and only followed through with about half of it.  I’ve found my way back to my Diet Coke addiction, although I’m drinking way less than I had been, eating better and subbing out soda for water as much as I can.  But somewhere during those months, I stopped caring about what had once been so important to me.  Thankfully, it was a good thing that I stopped caring, because it freed me to realize that I really don’t need a man to be happy.

This year, I think I only saw one of the many chick flicks that came out in theaters.  I spent more time reading and being creative.  I expanded my circle of friends (narrowly, but still) and became more involved in church.  I stopped focusing on all of the negative that I thought existed in my life and found a way to be happy with the positive.

I think a lot of things fell into perspective for me so far over these last months.  I found moments of pure happiness without a man.  And most importantly, I don’t spend all my time thinking about guys.  I don’t wonder what some stranger passing thinks of me (positively or negatively).  I don’t fret about it anymore.

Recently I had a guy friend ask me about my year.  I had mentioned it in passing to him several months ago and he was curious about what I was doing, why I was doing it and what kind of rules I set for myself.  He said he wanted to change the way he was living and was considering doing something similar to what I am currently in the middle of.

As I went over my rules with him, I realized that my biggest thing for this year wasn’t that I was forcing myself not to focus on men.  It was that I was trying to shift my thinking from what I don’t have to the bigger picture of my life and where I want it to be.  10 months later, my life still isn’t perfect.  I still have days that I’m lonely and some times that I’m miserable.  But I don’t let those days define me.  Instead, I make sure to find a way to see the positive.  To wallow when I need to and then dust myself off, pick myself up again and refocus on the positive.

Interestingly enough, I haven’t had many ‘bam’ moments in my life this year.  For this, I’m rather glad actually.  This year has been steady.  Not a ton of highs and lows like the last several years of my life.  I’ve got some ideas in the works for next year… so we’ll see what happens moving forward.

That’s all for now!

Be brave,