2015: Saudade

Somewhere around late August, too early, I started looking for the end of 2015.  Not that 2015 was a bad year ... overall.  I didn't use my vacation time too well, but that which was used appropriately, I enjoyed.  Planned trips worked out and the impromptu ones were a brief hoot.  Some longer term issues at work have (largely) improved, and my work hours allow me to leave when I want more often.
I may have even been pushing for the end of the year, but it was like pushing on a rope; time will pass at its own rate.  Never faster, never slower.

"Certainly a measure of this reactionary navel-noodling can be attributed to the standard metaphorical casting of autumn as the season when winter's deathly breath first fogs your rose-colored glasses, but on a more fundamental level I think it has to do with the reaping of gardens and good intentions, both of which tend to come in well below spring's predictions." 

Michael Perry (Truck - A Love Story)

Christmas came with the winter solstice behind it and the new calendar waiting to be hung on the wall, but Christmas morning woke up to 50 degrees after a Christmas Eve bike ride warm enough to wear shorts.  

On a rational level, I enjoyed the uncharacteristically warm December; my heating bill certainly has.  The warm weather made for more bike riding and some of the most comfortable deer hunting I've had.  Yet, the lack of winter was bringing with it a sense of prolonging a year that needed to end, the warm weather behaving as a nagging sense that something is unfinished, the epoch won't advance until some beastie somewhere is set free.

For the fourth year, I've time lapsed daily pictures of my back yard.  I very likely have the most photographed back yard in the township.  Proof that the year started and is over.

Bronnie Ware's Top Five Regrets of the Dying is repeated all over, so it isn't included here.  But it is worth rereading occasionally.  The last regret is one that seems to request attention after 2015.  Happiness is a choice.  It sounds so easy, and it probably can be.

There are already things to look forward to early in 2016.  An annual trip south is actually quite close.  A trip west, very far west, to scrawl a few difficult check marks on of the bucket list is being planned.

Since Christmas, winter does seem like it may have arrived.  With winter winds and daily highs nearer freezing, the calendar can be changed.  I'm not sure if the beastie has been slain or set free; only time will tell.

Looking back over the four years of time lapsed video brings with it a sense of hope.  Winter, in some form, will always come.  Winter will relent to spring, bringing green and good intentions.  Summer will bring the deliciousness of muggy mornings and evening walks watching the Queen Anne's lace and chicory grow.  Fall will bring the hopefulness of the treestands.  And winter will come, yet again, with the right mindset, accompanied by happy reflection since happiness is a choice.

Thanks for everything.